Justice Secretary announces the Detainee Inquiry will not proceed

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.

Keith Best, Chief Executive of Freedom from Torture said:

"The credibility of the Detainee Inquiry was shot months ago. While Freedom from Torture is delighted that the government has seen sense in not be pressing ahead with a deeply flawed process that would never have got to the full truth, it's imperative that this is not the end. We still need a robust, judicial inquiry capable of exposing mistakes that were made at the very highest levels of government. The government now has the time to design such a process that will secure the support of the survivors of torture - while the criminal investigations into rendition to Libya run their course."

The termination of the inquiry follows last week's announcement from the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) and the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) 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.

Ken Clarke confirmed to the House of Commons that the British government intends to hold "an independent, judge-led inquiry once all police investigations have concluded. But there now appears no prospect of the Gibson Inquiry being able to start in the foreseeable future".

In Sir Peter Gibson's statement, he stated "This task now set for us remains an important one: it will ensure that the work we have done is not wasted and we hope that it will materially assist the future inquiry that the Government intends to establish."

Alongside survivors, lawyers and NGOs, Freedom from Torture announced it would not participate in the Inquiry last year following the publication of a deeply problematic Protocol and Terms of Reference governing the running of the process. This month further international human rights experts added their voices to the call for key changes to the Detainee Inquiry which was expressed in an open letter sent to Prime Minister David Cameron.