Former MI5 boss claims US hid torture of terror suspects
Former MI5 boss claims US hid torture of terror suspects
Wednesday, 10, Mar 2010 02:15
By Alex Steger.
The former head of MI5 has claimed that the US intelligence agencies hid their mistreatment of terror suspects from their British counterparts.
Baroness Manningham-Buller claimed that she only discovered that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who allegedly masterminded the 9/11 attacks, had been water-boarded after she left the security service in 2007.
Her claims come after a series of allegations suggesting that British agents were complicit in the torture of terror suspects by US intelligence agents.
The subject has attracted widespread attention after it was disclosed that the treatment of Binyam Mohamed, the British resident formerly held at Guantánamo Bay, was described as "cruel, inhuman and degrading".
Speaking at the House of Lords, to the Mile End Group, Lady Manningham-Buller said: "The Americans were very keen that people like us did not discover what they were doing."
She added that she was surprised by the progress the US made in gaining intelligence from Mr Mohammed, given her own experience of interrogating Irish terror suspects.
She said: "I said to my staff, 'Why is he talking?' because our experience of Irish prisoners, Irish terrorists, was that they never said anything.
"They said, 'Well, the Americans say he is very proud of his achievements when questioned about it.'
"It wasn't actually until after I retired that I read that, in fact, he had been water-boarded 160 times."
She also warned that the allegations of complicity could jeopardise the current work of British security services.