MI5, UK Foreign Office accused of terrorism suspects' torture 'cover-up'

London, Feb 11(ANI): The United Kingdom's counter-intelligence and security agency, MI5, and the Foreign Office have been accused of systematically covering up their involvement in the torture of former Guantanamo Bay detainee Binyam Mohamed.

The attack comes from the Master of the Rolls, the second most senior judge in England, Lord Neuberger, who said that there was such a "culture of suppression" in the Security Service and the Foreign Office that the public and the courts should "distrust" any assurances from them that they respect human rights.

Lord Neuberger bluntly accused MI5 officers of lying to parliament about the Service's role in the Binyam's torture and said that civil servants in the Foreign Office deliberately withheld information from Foreign Secretary David Miliband.

His comments prompted such alarm in the Government that the Foreign Office took the unprecedented step of secretly asking the judge to remove their references from a Court of Appeal judgment.

Lord Neuberger had attacked MI5 and the Foreign Office in a draft version of a ruling in which he and two other judges threw out an attempt by Foreign Secretary to censor information about MI5's alleged complicity in the torture of Binyam, who was released from Guantanamo Bay last year.

The final judgment released on Wednesday showed that MI5 had been aware that Binyam was deprived of sleep, shackled and made to think he might "disappear". (ANI)