Claims of British collusion in torture spread to Egypt

[cal04]

• Briton claims UK colluded in his torture in Egypt
• Detainee says he was hooded and beaten over five days
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/16/azhar-khan-torture-egypt

Allegations of British collusion in torture have widened to Egypt, where a young British man says he suffered appalling mistreatment during a week of illegal detention while being interrogated on the basis of information that he says can only have come from the UK.

The development comes after the Conservative leader, David Cameron, said there needed to be a full inquiry, not just to discover whether crimes had been committed by British officials but to establish whether the government's "moral authority" has been maintained.

Azhar Khan, a 26-year-old who has seen a number of friends jailed for terrorist offences, says Egyptian intelligence officers who detained him when he flew into the country last July forced him to stand on the same spot for five days, with little rest, while beating him and subjecting him to electric shocks. Throughout this time, he says, he was asked detailed questions about his friends and associates in the UK.

The Foreign Office has confirmed that Khan was detained in Egypt for a week last July and, after being pressed repeatedly, admitted that it knew that Khan had subsequently complained that he had been tortured. The Guardian understands that Khan's allegations of mistreatment are supported by medical evidence.

(snip)
In addition to Cameron's calls for an inquiry, however, Lord Carlile of Berriew, the government's independent assessor of counter-terrorism legislation, said this month that a judicial inquiry was needed to examine Britain's role in the US policy of rendering suspects to foreign prisons where they can be tortured

[BlooInBloo]

1. And here's the latest drip-drip of torture a la US....

http://thinkprogress.org/2009/03/15/red-cross-torture-report/

[Idealism]

2. The American media will never report this.

A bad word is nary read about Egypt in the states. They are too good of allies to let torture, sodomy, and repression get in the way of USAID from flooding their military dictatorship. :sarcasm: