MI5 ‘colluded with CIA’ over suspect sent to torture jails

The Times
Dec. 18, 2005

LAWYERS for a former pupil at a top British independent school have accused the government of colluding with the CIA to send him to a series of prisons where he was abused.

The claims relating to Bisher al-Rawi, a former student at Millfield now being held at Guantanamo Bay, will raise fresh questions about British involvement in the controversial American practice of “extraordinary rendition”.

The procedure, in which prisoners are secretly flown by the CIA to countries where they may face torture during interrogation, has sparked a string of investigations across Europe.

The government has faced mounting criticism from human rights groups and opposition politicians since it emerged that CIA-operated planes had landed at British airports on dozens of occasions.

Al-Rawi, 37, an Iraqi national who has lived in Britain since 1985, and his business partner Jamil al-Banna, a Jordanian who was granted refugee status in Britain in 2000, were detained three years ago in Gambia. They were later flown by the CIA to Afghanistan and then to Cuba in March 2003.

The men are accused of being associated with Al-Qaeda and Abu Qatada, a radical Muslim cleric who has been described as Osama Bin Laden’s European ambassador. Qatada is in a British jail pending deportation to his native Jordan.

In Cuba one interrogator is alleged to have told al-Banna: “Why are you angry at America? It is your government, Britain, the MI5, who called the CIA and told them you and Bisher were in Gambia and to come and get you. Britain gave everything to us. Britain sold you out to the CIA.”

The comments, recounted by al-Banna, 43, to Clive Stafford Smith, his British lawyer, are outlined in transcripts of interviews recently declassified by the Pentagon.

Al-Rawi has claimed he was approached by MI5 in London to act as an unpaid intermediary with Qatada. When the preacher supposedly went into hiding at the end of 2001, al-Rawi admits finding Qatada a new flat. However, he also claims he told his MI5 handlers where the preacher was staying.

Last year al-Rawi asked for three MI5 agents to be called as witnesses before a military tribunal at Guantanamo.

The British authorities refused to co-operate, but it is understood the same agents may have interviewed al-Rawi at the American prison on “a handful of occasions”.

Prior to travelling to Gambia in November 2002 to set up a peanut-oil processing factory, al-Rawi and al-Banna were arrested at Gatwick airport and questioned by police about a suspect electronic device. They were released when it turned out to be a battery charger.

The pair flew out to Gambia about a week later, but were stopped again by local intelligence officers at Banjul airport and handed over to the Americans. “They said they were from the (US) embassy,” al-Banna told a military tribunal last year. “They were wearing black, they even covered their heads black.”

His account matches descriptions of the CIA’s rendition unit. Flight logs reportedly show that a CIA-operated Gulfstream jet, registration N379P, was in Banjul on the day of the men’s arrest. The same plane has landed at five different British airports.

Al-Banna and al-Rawi were held for about a month in Gambia before being flown to the notorious “dark prison” in Kabul and the US military airbase at Bagram.
There, al-Banna claims he was offered $10m (Ł5.6m) and a US passport to testify against Qatada. When he refused, an interrogator told him: “I am going to London . . . I am going to f*** your wife. Your wife is going to be my bitch. Maybe you’ll never see your children again.”
Al-Banna was so angry that he spat at his interrogator, but was allegedly slapped around the face until he bled.

Al-Rawi claims that an American soldier punched him in the eye when he was being transferred from Kabul to Bagram. He alleges that interrogators threatened to send him to Jordan where “electric cables” would be used to extract evidence.

Both men have been repeatedly questioned at Guantanamo by American intelligence officers. Al-Banna claims he was kept in interrogation rooms for up to 14 hours a day with the air-conditioning on full so that it was freezing cold.

The Home Office, which covers MI5, refused to comment. The US State Department said: “When we act, we do so lawfully.”