LEAD: British intelligence faces new "torture" claims over Libya

By Anna Tomforde Jan 12, 2012, 18:19 GMT

London - British intelligence services on Thursday faced fresh investigations into the unlawful rendition and torture of terrorism suspects in Libya, where two former Gaddafi opponents have made torture claims.

At the same time, police and judicial authorities said that there was not enough evidence to prosecute intelligence agents in two similar cases linked to the war in Afghanistan and the 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States.

'The allegations raised in the two specific cases concerning the alleged rendition of named individuals to Libya and the alleged ill-treatment of them in Libya are so serious that it is in the public interest for them to be investigated,' a joint statement issued by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and Scotland Yard said.

Fresh investigations would be launched into allegations that British agents were involved in the 2004 rendition to Libya of Abdel Hakim Belhaj and Sami al-Saadi. Belhaj later became a leader of the anti-Gaddafi forces in Libya.

However, there was insufficient evidence to bring charges against intelligence agents in the case of Binyam Mohamed, a former inmate of the Guantanamo prison camp, and another former terrorism suspect, interrogated at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, the statement said.

Documents relating to the new Libyan cases were retrieved from the rubble of the British embassy in Tripoli at the height of the fighting last year.

They are the basis for claims by Belhaj that he was tortured and interrogated by 'foreign agents' in Libya after he and his wife were arrested en route from their exile in Beijing to Britain in 2004.

Al-Saadi is reported to be claiming damages from the British government for the alleged rendition of his wife and four young children to Libya after their arrest on a flight from Hong Kong to Britain.

British law firm Leigh Day & Co, which represents the two Libyans, said Thursday that their clients 'specifically remember UK agents coming to question them whilst in detention in Tripoli.'

'There is substantial evidence of collusion in torture by British security services with the knowledge and express approval of UK ministers,' said Richard Stein, a representative of the law firm.

The fresh allegations are expected to delay the start of a planned inquiry into allegations of British involvement in torture and rendition, announced by Prime Minister David Cameron last year.

While the government was keen to 'draw a line' under the allegations, the implications of fresh police investigations would now have to be considered, a government spokesman said Thursday.

Lawyers and human rights groups representing former detainees have already said they would boycott the inquiry which lacked 'credibility and transparency.'

Meanwhile Mohamed, an Ethiopian who was freed from the infamous camp in early 2009, said in London Thursday that he believed any wider criminal investigation in Britain would reveal a 'pattern of massive complicity by UK bodies in criminality at the highest level.'

Mohamed has alleged that British agents provided the information for his interrogation in Pakistan, and his later transfer to Guantanamo via Morocco, between 2002 and 2004.

In his statement, the Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer, said Thursday that while there was insufficient evidence to bring charges, that decision 'should not be read as concluding that the ill-treatment alleged by Mr Mohamed did not take place or that it was lawful.'