Scotland Yard is to begin an urgent criminal investigation into allegations that UK intelligence agents were involved in the rendition of two individuals to Libya, where they allegedly suffered abuse and mistreatment under the regime of former dictator Muammer Gaddafi.
The announcement came as the Metropolitan Police and the Crown Prosecution Service confirmed that they would not prosecute MI5 and MI6 officials over separate claims – under investigation for the past three years – that security agents had been complicit in the torture of two terror suspects in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
However, the police and CPS said in a joint statement that the more recent allegations of Libyan renditions were “so serious” that they could not wait until the conclusion of a government-commissioned inquiry into the treatment of detainees, to be led by retired judge Sir Peter Gibson. Instead, the police will initiate a new investigation.
Scotland Yard first received a complaint about alleged rendition and ill-treatment in Libya from an individual last November. One month later Dominic Grieve, the attorney-general, wrote to the Met commissioner to draw his attention to that case and one other, in which “similar issues arose”.
It is understood that one of the complainants is Abdul Hakim Belhadj, a commander of the rebel forces in Libya, who is already suing the UK over his alleged his rendition to Libya in 2004. The other is reported to be Sami al-Saadi, a prominent opponent of Colonel Gaddafi’s regime, who is also taking legal action relating to claims that he and his family were rendered to Libya by British security forces in the same year.
Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister, said on Thursday that the government condemned torture and inhumane treatment.
“We will never support it, we won’t ask other people to do it on our behalf,” Mr Clegg said. He added that the government and the security services would give “complete and full co-operation” to the new inquiries.
The earlier investigations into alleged abuse in Afghanistan and Pakistan, which have now been shut down, first began in 2008 following the claim that an MI5 agent had been involved in the torture of Guantánamo Bay detainee Binyam Mohammed. Mr Mohammed, originally from Ethiopia, was granted asylum by the UK in the mid 1990s but was subsequently arrested in Pakistan in 2002 on suspicion of terror offences.
Police and prosecutors said on Thursday that while they found that intelligence agents had provided information to US officials about Mr Mohammed and suggested questions for interrogators, there was “insufficient evidence” that any individual agent was aware of a real or serious risk that Mr Mohammed would be tortured.
On a separate allegation of MI6 complicity in torture – made by a detainee who was held by US authorities at Afghanistan’s Bagram Air Base – the CPS said it also failed to find necessary evidence, partly because they could not arrange access to the detainee in question or elicit a statement from him.
Responding to the joint announcement, Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, the human rights campaign group, said it was now even more important that the alleged victims, security agencies and the public should see a “full and independent judicial inquiry into one of the worst scandals of recent memory”.
However, she made clear this would not be achieved under the upcoming Gibson review . “The secretive and toothless Cabinet Office process chaired by Sir Peter Gibson is an embarrassingly inadequate response,” she said.
Liberty is one of a number of campaign groups that have vowed to boycott the inquiry because they are concerned it will not comply with the government’s obligations to investigate torture under the terms of European Union law.
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