10 torture techniques blessed by Bush | Bush on torture: quotes

Fresh revelations about the CIA’s torture techniques have thrown the spotlight on British Intelligence, which gained valuable insight into terror networks from confessions extracted by American officers. They have raised further fears that British agents could be prosecuted for their indirect role in the abuse of detainees.

Documents declassified this week by the Obama Administration – four US Justice Department memos authorising “harsh interrogation” – show that the CIA based more than 3,000 intelligence reports on the questioning of “high-value” terror suspects from September 11 2001 to April 2003.

They were sanctioned by US government lawyers during the Bush presidency, and MI5 and MI6 would have had access to huge amounts of such material.

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Many senior Democrats are as deep in this one as their Republican counterparts

Catherine Philp, Diplomatic Correspondent

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There is evidence of highly questionable intelligence-gathering procedures by US servicemen and support for torture, murder and inhumane treatment

• Evidence of torture in South Vietnam jails

• Interrogation methods around the world

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• GRAPHIC: the techniques sanctioned under Bush

The memos show that the majority of these reports – some of which would have been passed to the British as part of intelligence-sharing arrangements between the two countries – came “from detainees subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques”.

In the period between September 11 2001 and April 2003, there were a number of crucial intelligence tip-offs to the British authorities that may have come via US interrogation of suspected al-Qaeda terrorists.

They include the alert that led to the decision by Tony Blair in February 2003 to send 400 troops in light tanks to Heathrow after a warning of an imminent attack on airliners coming into the airport. Another led to the deployment of special forces to intercept a cargo vessel, the MV Nisha, off the Isle of Wight in December 2001 because of intelligence that a ship in the English Channel might be carrying biological weapon components.

US Justice Department lawyers justified the techniques, saying that they did not induce severe pain or long-term mental ill health. Opponents of the practice have described it as “torture lite”.

The CIA told the US Justice Department that the enhanced interrogation methods used – including waterboarding (simulating drowning), cramped confinement, wall-standing and sleep deprivation – had been “virtually indispensable” to obtaining “actionable intelligence”. Some Whitehall officials were hoping that the stark clarity of the legal arguments justifying harsh interrogation would keep the focus of attention on the Washington end of the story. But there remain concerns of possible legal implications for Britain, as America’s most intimate partner in the intelligence business. _Officials said the Government and the intelligence services had had no knowledge of the US Justice Department’s memos until they were published on Thursday night.

There are already fears in both MI5 and MI6 – arising from the case of Binyam Mohamed, who alleged that he was tortured by the CIA in a secret detention centre in Morocco – that their counter-terrorist intelligence work will be restricted in the future because of concern that individual officers might face prosecution if found to have been indirectly involved.

Mr Mohamed, an Ethiopian-born British resident recently released from four years of detention in Guantánamo Bay, claimed that he was subjected to inhumane treatment during interrogation by the CIA and that some of the questions had been framed by MI5. His allegations are now the subject of a Scotland Yard investigation ordered by Baroness Scotland of Asthal, QC, the Attorney-General, to assess whether any British intelligence officer was criminally complicit in Mr Mohamed’s mistreatment.

Asked whether the Prime Minister intended to stop any possible prosecution of intelligence officers in the case of Binyam Mohamed, in the light of President Obama’s decision not to allow CIA officers to be prosecuted, No 10 referred the question to the Home Office. A spokesman there said: “This case has been handed to the Metropolitan Police and is a matter for them and for the Crown Prosecution Service.”

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