Dame Eliza also said it was impossible for agencies in this country to know if information supplied by foreign security services had been obtained by the use of torture. She added that to try to find out would jeopardise future relationships.

In a statement Dame Eliza cited the example of Kamel Bourgass, a failed asylum-seeker jailed this year for killing Detective Constable Stephen Oake and attempting to create ricin in his North London flat.

She wrote in the statement, obtained by Channel 4 News, that information about his intentions first came from an interview conducted by Algerian security services with Mohammed Meguerba, an al-Qaeda terrorist. The statement was submitted to the House of Lords, which is considering an appeal to a Court of Appeal ruling last year that British intelligence services can use information extracted under torture to detain suspected terrorists.

The appellants are foreign nationals, Algerians or other north Africans detained in Belmarsh under the indefinite de- tention of the Anti-Terrorism Crime and Security Act 2001.

They are challenging the Government’s strategy of by-passing traditional standards of due process and the constraints of human rights law by allowing the executive to deport or detain without proof of wrongdoing.

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