Campaigners have called for a judicial inquiry on recent row mounts over abuse of detainee abroad, The Daily Telegraph reports on 9 August.
The Home Secretary Alan Johnson and the Foreign Secretary Daily Miliband said it was “not possible to eradicate all risk” that foreign allies had mistreated terrorism suspects.
They pointed out in a jointly written article published on Sunday that intelligence officers faced “hard choices” and that their overriding aim was to “defend both our citizens’ rights and their security”.
They wrote: “Our position is clear, and the UK firmly opposes torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment.
“When detainees are held by our police or Armed Forces we can be sure how they are treated. By definition, we cannot have that same level of assurance when they are held by foreign governments, whose obligations may differ from our own.”
Their article came following several detailed allegations of British complicity in torture.
According to today’s Guardian newspaper, Sir John Scarlett, the head of MI6, denied his officers were complicit in torture.
Scarlett told BBC Radio 4’s A Century in the Shadows programme there was “no torture and no complicity in torture” by the British secret service.
He said: “Our officers are as committed to the value and the human values of liberal democracy as anybody else.”
However, he then added: “They also have the responsibility of protecting the country against terrorism, and these issues need to be debated and understood in that context.”
Sir John Scarlett addressed the parallel concerns of what the Home Secretary and the Foreign Secretary have previously underlined that our Armed Forces need to “defend both our citizens’ rights and their security”.
Scotland Yard is currently investigating an MI5 officer over the questioning of the UK resident Binyam Mohamed while he was being held incommunicado in Pakistan.
Two high court judges recently revealed MI5 knew more about the circumstances surrounding Mohamed than it had originally admitted.
However, The Guardian reports that David Miliband is continuing to refuse to allow a seven-page summary of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) about the case to be disclosed.
The CIA material is widely believed to contain evidence of what the UK knew about abuse of Mohamed.
The foreign affairs committee yesterday said the government must adopt a more healthy approach to Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency about the abuse of detainees, and also it was "imperative" that the government fulfilled its legal obligations to act positively to prevent torture, and investigate allegations of it.
The parliamentary joint committee on human rights, in a stinging report last week, also said an independent inquiry was the only way to restore public confidence in the intelligence and security agencies.
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