Police investigate torture claims
Updated on 10 July 2009
The Metropolitan Police are to investigate claims that British agents colluded in torture, Scotland Yard said today.
Officers are to investigate allegations by former Guantanamo Bay detainee Binyam Mohamed that MI5 officers were complicit in his torture.
The case was referred to police by the Attorney General, Baroness Scotland, earlier this year.
Mr Mohamed was held in the infamous Guantanamo Bay detention centre for more than four years. He arrived back in the UK in February.
The former UK resident was arrested in Pakistan in 2002. He alleges that, during three months of detention, he was tortured by Pakistani agents and interrogated by the FBI and MI5.
He says he was then taken to Morocco after being subject to "extraordinary rendition" by the CIA with the explicit knowledge of the Security Service, before being taken to Guantanamo.
During further torture in Morocco, he says he became aware that his torturers were being fed questions and material from British intelligence agents. In a statement made following his return to the UK, Mohamed said "the very worst moment came when I realised in Morocco that the people who were torturing me were receiving questions and materials from British intelligence".
Then-home secretary Jacqui Smith originally referred Mohamed's claims to Lady Scotland in October last year after they first surfaced in a High Court case brought by his lawyers.
The statement from the Met said: "The Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) was invited by the Attorney General to investigate allegations surrounding the detention of Binyam Mohamed.
"The papers were reviewed by the MPS and the investigation accepted. A team of detectives, working to Deputy Assistant Commissioner Sue Akers, has now been selected and vetted to appropriate levels. As a result a criminal investigation has now begun.
"The inquiry team is in close liaison with the Crown Prosecution Service and will regularly consult them as the investigation moves forward.
"Inquiries will be conducted as expeditiously but thoroughly as possible and will follow the evidence to identify whether any offences have occurred."
