London suspect in CIA torture claim

The Times
Dec. 11, 2005

A FORMER London student accused of terrorism claims he was tortured under the CIA’s policy of flying prisoners to countries that use extreme interrogation techniques.

The Pentagon alleges that Binyam Mohammed plotted to detonate a radioactive “dirty bomb” in America and received instructions from Al-Qaeda’s senior leaders, including the architect of the 9/11 attacks.

The 27-year-old, from Notting Hill, west London, faces a trial before a military court at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. He could be jailed for life.

Mohammed’s lawyers, however, say he is the first British resident to become a victim of the CIA’s “extraordinary rendition” programme which came under scrutiny last week as Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, toured Europe.

The lawyers claim the allegations against Mohammed are based on a confession extracted through torture in a Moroccan jail — and accuse the British authorities of being complicit in his ordeal.

In a diary written by Mohammed and seen by The Sunday Times, he claims two British officials knew in advance of his transfer to Morocco and says his interrogators told him they were being assisted by MI5.

Mohammed is thought to have been flown in and out of north Africa on two private jets, reportedly operated by the CIA, which have landed at UK airports more than 150 times, according to official records.

The indictment against Mohammed accuses him of attending terrorist training camps in Afghanistan in 2001, including one alongside Richard Reid, the failed airline shoe-bomber.

The Pentagon claims he was introduced to Abu Zubaydah, Al-Qaeda’s chief recruiter, with whom Mohammed discussed making an “improvised dirty bomb”. It is alleged that the Londoner, who claimed asylum in Britain in 1994 after fleeing Ethiopia, later met Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind behind the September 11 attacks, in Karachi, Pakistan.

The Al-Qaeda chief allegedly briefed him on a “mission” to blow up New York apartment blocks but he was arrested at Karachi airport in April 2002 as he attempted to fly to London.

Although his claims cannot be verified — and Al-Qaeda terrorists are coached to make false allegations of torture if captured — Mohammed’s diary tells a different story. He admits going to Afghanistan but denies meeting any Al-Qaeda leaders.

While he was held in Pakistan, Mohammed claims he was met by two Britons, who he believes to be MI6 officers.

“They gave me a cup of tea with a lot of sugar in it,” he writes. “I initially took one. ‘No, you need a lot more. Where you’re going you need a lot of sugar.’ . . . One of them did tell me that I was going to get tortured by the Arabs.”

A few weeks later, Mohammed claims he was handed to a team of Americans “dressed in black, with masks, wearing what looked like Timberland boots”. He was stripped naked, photographed, given an enema and put on a plane with shackles, earphones and a blindfold. A report in The Washington Post last week attributed a virtually identical procedure to the CIA’s “Rendition Group”.

On July 22, 2002 — the day that Mohammed claims he was moved to Morocco — flight logs show a Gulfstream V private jet, registration number N379P, was at Rabat airport.

This plane was reportedly owned by a CIA front company called Premier Executive Transport Services of Massachusetts. Although it has since been re-registered twice, the jet has landed at UK airports 127 times since the 9/11 attacks. It has stopped at Glasgow, Prestwick, Luton and RAF airbases at Northolt and Brize Norton.

Mohammed claims he was interrogated for 18 months in a Moroccan prison, where he was accused of being “the big man in Al-Qaeda” and had his genitals cut with a scalpel.

His lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, who helped to compile Mohammed’s diary after interviewing him in Cuba this year, believes the British were liaising with the Moroccans.

Mohammed writes: “They asked me about a (Muslim) heritage centre . . . where I worked . . . They showed me pictures and asked about people who had been there.

“The interrogator told me, ‘We have been working with the British, and we have photos of people given to us by MI5’.”

On January 22, 2004, Mohammed was flown from Morocco to Afghanistan. Flight plans show another CIA-operated plane, a Boeing 737, registration N313P, flew from Rabat to Kabul that day.

This plane, which has also been reregistered, has landed in the UK 39 times. Aircraft thought to be used by the CIA have stopped off in Britain on more than 200 occasions. It is not known whether any prisoners were on board.

Last week Tony Blair told MPs that torture could not be justified “in any set of circumstances”. He said he accepted Rice’s assurances that America had acted in accordance with international conventions.

Mohammed was transferred to Guantanamo Bay in September 2004. A date for his trial has yet to be set. “There is no doubt that Binyam was rendered and tortured in a most savage and barbaric way,” said Stafford Smith.

“There should be a full-scale inquiry into the British role.”














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