Detainee Inquiry

The highly anticipated inquiry into whether British officials have been complicit in the torture and mistreatment of detainees overseas is to be pulled, Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke announced today.

The Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) and the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) today announced that criminal investigations into two individual cases of rendition to and ill-treatment in Libya will commence now rather than at the conclusion of the Detainee Inquiry due to the seriousness of the allegations.

Foreign Secretary, William Hague, today delivered an unprecedented public speech on the role of secret intelligence in Britain’s foreign policy, in which he praised the contribution of the various security agencies and sought to set out what the Government is doing to tackle the lessons of the past.

UK involvement in torture overseas was brought to light yet again recently with the unearthing of top secret documents by Human Rights Watch in Libya. If verified, they show the head of counter-terrorism at MI6 engaged in fawning dialogue with Gaddafi’s former intelligence chief, Musa Kusa, about how ‘glad’ Britain was to help deliver into his hands the Libyan dissident Abdel Hakim Belhadj. Now head of the Tripoli Military Council – and therefore an ally of the UK – Belhadj claimed that following the intervention of MI6 he suffered years of torture whilst being imprisoned in Tripoli, including being hung by his wrists and beaten during interrogations.