'Prove UK is not complicit in torture', MPs demand

Ministers must prove that Britain is not complicit in the torture of terror suspects, a hard-hitting Commons report demands today.

The Foreign Affairs Committee (FAC) challenges the Government to provide details of investigations it has held into allegations made by former Guantanamo Bay detainees.

The committee's report is the second in a week from Parliament to demand more government transparency over torture and extraordinary rendition. Earlier, the Joint Committee on Human Rights called for an independent inquiry into the UK's role.

Ministers have issued repeated denials of involvement in torture, but there is a row over the definition of what amounts to "complicity". The FAC warns that the use of information gleaned from torture could amount to complicity. The Government has kept to its line that Britain does not "engage in, collude with or condone" torture, but steers clear of the word "complicity".

A High Court ruling last week involving Binyam Mohamed, the Ethiopian-born British resident freed from Guantanamo Bay earlier this year, found that an MI5 officer had visited Morocco at the time Mr Mohamed claims he was tortured in that country.

In a separate development this weekend, MI5 was accused of misleading MPs on the Intelligence and Security Committee during its investigation into torture. Human rights lawyers wrote to the chairman, Kim Howells, pointing out what they claimed were glaring omissions in MI5 evidence on the detention and torture of Mr Mohamed.