Amid growing concerns about Britain's relationship with Pakistan's ISI spy agency, lawmakers have demanded an urgent inquiry into UK's complicity in the torture of detainees in Pakistan, Egypt and Uzbekistan following a critical report by a House panel on human rights.
After a critical report by parliament's Joint Committee on Human Rights, the Conservatives called on Prime Minister Gordon Brown to order an urgent inquiry into the committee's claims of UK complicity in the torture of detainees in Guantnamo Bay, Pakistan, Egypt, and Uzbekistan, the 'Daily Telegraph' said on Sunday.
MPs expressed particular concern about Britain's relationship with Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, calling for an explicit assurance that UK officials would not be "uncritical of, or complicit in, abuses of human rights", it said.
In a separate report, the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee warned ministers that the use of information supplied by foreign intelligence agencies implicated in the torture of detainees could amount to complicity, the British daily said.
Meanwhile, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband and Home Secretary Alan Johnson insisted that everything possible is done to minimise the risk of mistreatment by foreign regimes.
In a joint article for 'The Sunday Telegraph', the two Cabinet ministers said Britain's security and intelligence services (MI5 and MI6) face "hard choices" and the overriding aim is to "defend both our citizens' rights and their security".
It is impossible to guarantee that information used by the security services has not been obtained through torture, the two ministers admitted.
They wrote that "intelligence from overseas is critical to our success in stopping terrorism". "All the most serious plots and attacks in the UK in this decade have had significant links abroad," they underlined.
Scotland Yard is conducting a criminal probe into claims that MI5 was complicit in the abuse of Binyam Mohamed, a British resident who says he was tortured while being held at sites in Pakistan, Morocco and Afghanistan, the report said.
