MI6 consulted David Miliband on interrogations
David Miliband gave MI6 the green light to proceed with intelligence-gathering operations in countries where there was a possible risk of terrorism suspects being tortured, the Guardian has learned.
During the three years Miliband served as foreign secretary, MI6 always consulted him personally before embarking on what a source described as "any particularly difficult" attempts to gain information from a detainee held by a country with a poor human rights record.
While Miliband blocked some operations, he is known to have given permission for others to proceed. Officers from MI5 are understood to have sought similar permission from a series of home secretaries in recent years.
Today, 24 hours before the Labour leadership election closed, Miliband took the unprecedented step of returning to the Foreign Office to study files relating to three British citizens who were tortured in Bangladesh and Egypt while he was foreign secretary. After spending almost two hours examining the papers, he issued a statement in which he said the documents contained no evidence that UK ministers were asked to grant permission for any of the men to be detained, and said that it would be wrong to suggest that he had ever sanctioned torture. The statement does not address the possibility that intelligence extracted under torture was later received by the UK authorities.
Miliband's spokeswoman said: "David would never ever sanction torture and it is completely wrong to suggest, imply, or leave a shadow of a doubt otherwise."
It is understood that the files do document allegations of mistreatment made by the detainees, however. These are contained in papers detailing the Foreign Office's efforts to seek consular access to the prisoners. The papers do not rule out the possibility that MI5 was involved in any of the cases as its activities would have to be approved by the Home Office, rather than the foreign secretary.
The confirmation that there was close ministerial supervision of counter-terrorism operations conducted in partnership with countries with poor human rights records comes as a judge, Sir Peter Gibson, appointed by David Cameron, prepares to mount an inquiry into the UK's role in torture and rendition since 2001.
One source with detailed knowledge of Miliband's deliberations acknowledged that he was asked for permission only when the suspect was held in countries with poor human rights records. He was not consulted on "routine co-operation", even with such countries, according to the source. It is understood that his judgment on whether to approve UK involvement in an interrogation took into account factors such as which unit was holding the detainee and the specific region of a country in which they were being held.
Miliband has spoken several times in recent weeks about the responsibility he bore to balance the need to defend the security of the UK and the British people, with what he describes as the need to "uphold the values of the nation". Last month he said: "The greatest two responsibilities of government are to ensure the security of its people, and to uphold the values of a free society. And that's what I did in all of the exercise of the powers that we did." In one interview he added that he believed he always made "the right call" when asked to make these judgments.
As foreign secretary, Miliband fought an unsuccessful legal battle to prevent the public seeing part of a court judgment that showed MI5 was aware Binyam Mohamed was being tortured in Pakistan before one of its officers was sent to interrogate him. He also resisted calls for the publication of the secret interrogation policy governing MI5 and MI6 officers, on the grounds that to do so would "give succour to our enemies". Since then he has been sensitive to questions about the role he played in authorising counter-terrorism operations.
Miliband declined to answer a number of questions put by the Guardian 12 days ago about his role in granting MI6 permission to proceed with such operations, and his assertion that he always struck the correct balance. As a consequence it was unclear whether he knew that people were being tortured. He also said he was unable to say how often MI6 asked for permission to proceed with such operations, and how often he refused. Earlier this year, Bangladeshi authorities told the Guardian that during 2007-08 they investigated around 12 British nationals resident in Bangladesh at the request of British intelligence officers. One senior counter-terrorism official in Dhaka said that the question of whether any of these individuals posed any risk to the UK "could not have been dealt with by British law - because of the question of human rights". The official declined to elaborate. There is evidence that at least two British citizens have been tortured in Bangladesh during the last 18 months. Miliband said today that the files he scrutinised contained no evidence of ministers being asked for permission to detain those two men, nor a third Briton detained and tortured in Cairo in July 2008.
One of the men tortured in Bangladesh, Faisal Mostafa, was detained in March last year. Mostafa has twice been cleared of terrorism offences at trial in the UK. He says he was suspended from his wrists for days at a time, hung upside down, subjected to electric shocks, beaten, deprived of food and exposed to bright lights for long periods. Since his return to the UK he has been diagnosed with post-traumatic shock.
He also has wounds in his right shoulder and hip that he says were inflicted by a drill. Mostafa, a chemistry lecturer from Greater Manchester, says he was questioned largely about associates and activities in the UK, with his interrogators particularly eager to learn about the activities in the UK of the Islamist groups Hizb ut-Tahrir and al-Muhajiroun, and the East London mosque at Whitechapel. In April this year, a restaurateur from Birmingham was detained in Dhaka and taken to a detention centre known as the Taskforce for Interrogation Cell. Gulam Mustafa, 48, who is no relation, had been under suspicion of involvement in terrorist activity for at least three years; in May 2007 the Bank of England had employed counter-terrorism powers to impose financial sanctions upon him, freezing his assets and prohibiting others from making funds or financial services available to him. On 2 May Mustafa was transferred to a prison hospital, where he spent the next three months being treated for injuries sustained during his interrogation. As well as being suspended from his wrists, beaten and subjected to electric shocks, Mustafa's friends allege that he was water-boarded, and that his knees were crushed.
Last night a spokeswoman for Miliband issued a statement: "Torture is a moral abomination and also illegal. There is an international ban on torture and every government and every human being should abide by it. The British government and all its agencies certainly do.
"The UK has detailed procedures that uphold the moral and legal conduct of the intelligence agencies and those responsible for them. When David was foreign secretary he followed them scrupulously. There are no Foreign Office papers seeking permission from ministers to enable the arrest of these three individuals or question them overseas."The statement does not address the possibility that intelligence extracted under torture was later received by the UK authorities.
