MI5 ‘colluded in scalpel torture’

[cal04]

Source: TimesOnline

SECRET MI5 memos reveal how the intelligence service colluded in the torture of a British resident and former Guantanamo Bay prisoner, it was claimed last night.

Binyam Mohamed, who returned to Britain after his release last month, said the MI5 memos showed that British spies orchestrated his questioning while he was being tortured with a scalpel in Morocco. He cited one MI5 memo which, he said, was headed “Request for further detainee questioning”.

Speaking for the first time about his 6½ years held as a CIA terror suspect in prisons in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Morocco and Guantanamo Bay, Mohamed gave a graphic account of “nightmarish tortures” that led him to come “close to insanity”. He said one interrogator in Morocco took his penis in his hand and cut it up to 30 times.

His claims of MI5 collusion in torture will increase pressure on the attorney-general, Baroness Scotland, to order a full criminal investigation into the spy agency.

Read more: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article5864809.ece

---

Reuters
Ex-detainee says UK supplied torture questions
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L7527010.htm

MailOnline
http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/news/article-1160238/How-MI5-colluded-torture-Binyam-Mohamed-claims-British-agents-fed-Moroccan-torturers-questions--WORLD-EXCLUSIVE.html

[bluesmail]

1. M15 CIA were hoping for insanity. eom

[Torn_Scorned_Ignored]

2. EXACTLY

[bemildred]

3. These people are sick, and should not have power over anyone.

Anyone at all.

[wroberts189]

4. knr

[Maat]

5. I think that both the MI5 and the CIA should be defunded ...

at least the operations side of things anyway.

It feels like being battered and robbed to pay taxes for this stuff.

[defendandprotect]

11. Absolutely . . . CIA should be dismantled --- JFK had the right idea--!!!

And Truman who created it ended up saying he created an "American Gestapo" ---

Add TORTURE to that --- !!!

[Maat]

18. Exactly (n/t)!

[harun]

20. There purpose was the Cold War, and it's over. Now it's their turn to

shut down.

[daleo]

6. Terrible, if true

To think that one of the intelligence agencies that brought down Hitler and the Gestapo would stoop to the same tactics.

[struggle4progress]

7. Demands for MI5 'torture' inquiry (BBC)

... In a Mail on Sunday interview, UK resident Binyam Mohamed claims MI5 fed his US captors questions which led him to make a false confession.

His allegations are being investigated by the government, but the Foreign Office said it did not condone torture.

Shadow justice secretary Dominic Grieve said the "extremely serious" claims should also be referred to the police ...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7930888.stm

[struggle4progress]

8. Secret telegrams show the link between US and UK officials in the case of Binyam Mohamed

Britain briefed my torturers, says ex-Guantanamo detainee
By Robert Verkaik and David Rose
Sunday, 8 March 2009

Speaking for the first time since his release from Guantanamo Bay, Binyam Mohamed today claims that horrific torture he experienced while being held was directly influenced by the British Government.

Mr Mohamed, 30, a British resident, said secret telegrams sent by MI5 to the CIA show that the men responsible for his torture were being influenced by questions from the British security service in London.

He describes how, after his capture in Pakistan in 2002, he was flown to Rabat in Morocco, where his chest and genitals were repeatedly cut by Moroccan interrogators working to American instructions. The claims will add to pressure on the Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, to release all the secret documents which human rights groups say will tell the full story of Britain's alleged collusion in the rendition and torture of Mr Mohamed.

Jack Straw, the Secretary of State for Justice, also faces questions over what he knew, when he was Foreign Secretary, about MI5's involvement in the US rendition. The former Guantanamo prisoner, released two weeks ago, said that his torturers were being fed specific questions relating to his movements from the years he had lived in London. Speaking from a country house in the Home Counties, where he is still recovering from his ordeal, Mr Mohamed remembers clearly the moment when MI5's questions were first channelled by his Moroccan interrogators. He said: "They started bringing British files to the interrogations – not one, but several of them, thick binders, some of them containing sheaves of photos of people who lived in London. It was obvious the British were feeding them questions about people in London." ...

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/britain-briefed-my-torturers-says-exguantanamo-detainee-1639757.html

[struggle4progress]

9. Ex-detainee says UK supplied torture questions

Sat Mar 7, 2009 5:53pm EST
By Stefano Ambrogi

LONDON, March 7 (Reuters) - ... "When I realised that the British were co-operating with the people torturing me, I felt completely naked," Mohamed told the Mail on Sunday newspaper in his first interview since being freed from the Guantanamo prison camp on Cuba last month ...

Mohamed quoted telegrams he said were sent by MI5 to the CIA while he was held between 2002 and 2004 in Morocco, where he says he endured horrific torture including scalpel cuts to his penis.

One of them, headed "Request for further Detainee questioning", included a list of written questions about another individual, whether Mohamed knew him, where he met him, where he had gone and what his intentions were ...

"They started bringing British files to the interrogations -- thick binders, some of them containing sheaves of photos of people who lived in London and places there like mosques," he said. "It was when they started asking the questions supplied by the British that my situation worsened. They sold me out." ...

http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSL7527010

[spamlet2002]

10. truly heinous

nt

[cosmicone]

12. Our only hope to set things straight is pressure on the ICJ

Perhaps worldwide rallies like in 2002 before the Iraq war would put this in limelight to make ICJ file charges against the whole gang.

[Solly Mack]

13. K&R

[chatnoir]

14. MI5, not MI6?

Interesting...

[muriel_volestrangler]

15. That's what you'd expect

MI5 is the counter-espionage and counter-terrorism service. If they were accusing someone of being related to terrorism, it would be MI5 doing it.

MI6's job is to spy on other countries.

[chatnoir]

16. I see it was Mi5 memos

And not necessarily Mi5 agents. That makes sense.

[The Stranger]

17. No Progressive should rest until every last torturer is brought to justice.

Every last one of them.

[bushmeister0]

19. Mohamed mauled at Gitmo after Obama took over.

"(Mohamed said)'Since the election it's got harsher. The guards would say, yes, this place is going to close down, but it was like they wanted to take their last revenge.'

The feared Emergency Reaction Force, a SWAT team used to punish inmates in their cells, is being used more often, he says.
Mohamed recalls an occasion when it was deployed against him.

The reason was that he was refusing to give his fingerprints which, despite all the torture, had unaccountably not been taken before: he says he feared they might use them to frame him.

'They nearly broke my back. The guy on top was twisting me one way, the guys on my legs the other.

'They marched me out of the cell to the fingerprint room, still cuffed. I clenched my fists behind me so they couldn't take prints, so they tried to take them by force.

'The guy at my head sticks his fingers up my nose and wrenches my head back, jerking it around by the nostrils.
'Then he put his fingers in my eyes. It felt as if he was trying to gouge them out.

Another guy was punching my ribs and another was squeezing my testicles. Finally I couldn't take it any more. I let them take the prints."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1160238/How-MI5-colluded-torture-Binyam-Mohamed-claims-British-agents-fed-Moroccan-torturers-questions--WORLD-EXCLUSIVE.html

Always with the privite parts.

"Mohamed was finally 'rendered' by the CIA again in January 2004 and taken to Afghanistan. He says the agents he met there responded with horror.

'When I got to Kabul a female agent started taking close-up pictures of my genitals. She was shocked.

'When they removed my diaper she could see blood was still oozing from the cuts on my penis.

'For the first two weeks they had me on antibiotics and they took pictures of my genitals every day.

'They told me, "This is not for us. It's for Washington." They wanted to be sure it was healing.'"

So, they were sending pix of his penis to Washington? Who to, I wonder? And if this is so, then obvioulsy someone high up knew what was going on.

I'd say if this one detainee is causing so much furor in the UK (not here, of course) then imagine what happens when the rest are released! Talk about walking political timebombs!

More embarrassment (and hopefully some indictments) to follow.