UK
lawmakers will ask U.S. for secret parts of CIA report, to scrutinize UK
spies
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[December 15, 2014]
By Andrew Osborn
LONDON (Reuters) - A powerful British
parliamentary committee will ask the United States to hand over blacked
out parts of a report into the CIA, to try to establish whether British
spies were complicit in torture or rendition, its chairman said on
Sunday.
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If parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) saw
evidence of such behavior, it could summon politicians from the
left-leaning Labour party such as former prime minister Tony Blair
who were in power at the time of the allegations.
"If British intelligence officials were present when people were
being tortured then they were complicit in that torture," Sir
Malcolm Rifkind, the ISC's chair and a former foreign secretary,
said.
"That would be quite against all the standards of this country. It
would be something that ought to be brought into the public domain,"
Rifkind told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show.
A report by the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee released last
week found that the CIA had misled the White House and the public
about its torture of detainees after the Sept. 11 attacks and had
acted more brutally than thought.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2014/Dec/15/images/ads/current/bonanzasteak_sda_112014.png) Its publication has already raised uncomfortable questions in Poland
and other countries identified as being involved in the program
about how much their leaders knew.
The British government said it had asked the United States, a close
ally, to keep parts of the report referring to UK intelligence
activity secret on national security grounds. It insisted it was not
covering up anything embarrassing.
Britain's foreign and domestic security services, known as MI6 and
MI5, have for years been accused of colluding in the ill-treatment
of suspected militants.
But the heads of MI5 and MI6 have repeatedly said they would never
use torture to gain information, and ministers have also denied
knowledge of sending suspects to face torture abroad.
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However, a Libyan dissident asserts he and his pregnant wife were
kidnapped by U.S. forces in 2004 with the help of MI6 and handed
over to Muammar Gaddafi’s government, which tortured him.
A Pakistani man also says he was waterboarded by British special
forces in Iraq in 2004, and a former Labour security minister says
there may have been "the odd case" when British spies knew of U.S.
torture.
Rifkind said his committee would be asking both the U.S. Senate and
the U.S. government to give it access to the relevant parts of the
report into the CIA as part of its own inquiry into the work of
Britain's intelligence services.
If necessary, he said the committee would summon spies and current
and former ministers to learn the truth. He said he hoped his
committee's report into the matter would be ready next year.
(Editing by Philippa Fletcher)
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