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MPs to question Miliband on torture allegations

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

London, March 3, IRNA -- The Foreign Affairs Committee announced Tuesday that it will be taking oral evidence from Foreign Secretary David Milband on the case of British resident Binyam Mohamed, who has alleged he was tortured by the CIA with the collaboration of UK agents.

The all-party group of MPs said that the question session, which has yet to have a date, will focus on a number of issues which relate to the responsibilities of the Foreign Office for securing the human rights of British citizens and others overseas.

Binyam returned to Britain last week after being incarcerated at the US internment camp in Guantanamo Bay for more than four years. He was originally arrested in Pakistan in 2002, before the CIA secretly flew him to Morocco where he was allegedly brutally tortured.

The release of the 30-year old Ethiopian comes after a London High Court ruling that evidence of how he may have been tortured, and what Britain's MI5 security agency knew about it, must remain secret because of serious threats from the US.

Miliband, who has come under pressure from MPs to release the evidence about his alleged torture, has denied that the US threatened to cut off cooperation with the UK if it had made public documents on his treatment. The issue, he said, was that it needed Washington’s consent.

Apart from Binyam's case, the Foreign Affairs Committee said it would also raise questions about allegations of UK complicity in torture in Pakistan, it policy on extraordinary rendition of terrorist suspects, the transfer of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan, allegations of abuse at the British Embassy in Iraq and the oversight of overseas contractors employed by UK posts.

Britain has denied any involvement in US renditions but a year ago, Miliband was forced to apologize to MPs, after admitting that contrary to 'earlier explicit assurances' two US flights had landed at Diego Garcia, which the UK rents to the US, in 2002.