UK's role in abuse of own citizens revealed

London, July 15 (ANI): The true extent of the previous Labour government's involvement in the illegal abduction and torture of its own citizens after 9/11, has been spelled out in stark detail with the disclosure during high court proceedings of a mass of highly classified documents.

Previously secret papers implicate Tony Blair's office in many of the events that are to be the subject of the judicial inquiry that David Cameron announced last week.

According to The Guardian, among the most damning documents are a series of interrogation reports from MI5 officers that betray their disregard for the suffering of a British resident whom they were questioning at a US airbase in Afghanistan.

The documents also show that the officers were content to see the mistreatment continue.

One of the most startling documents is chapter 32 of MI6's general procedural manual, entitled "Detainees and Detention Operations", which advises officers that among the "particular sensitivities" they need to consider before becoming directly involved in an operation to detain a terrorism suspect is the question of whether "detention, rather than killing, is the objective of the operation".

Other disclosed documents show how:

The Foreign Office decided in January 2002 that the transfer of British citizens from Afghanistan to Guantanamo was its "preferred option".

Jack Straw asked for that rendition to be delayed until MI5 had been able to interrogate those citizens.

Downing Street was said to have overruled FO attempts to provide a British citizen detained in Zambia with consular support in an attempt to prevent his return to the UK, with the result that he too was "rendered" to Guantanamo.

The papers have been disclosed as a result of civil proceedings brought by six former Guantanamo inmates against MI5 and MI6, the Home Office, the Foreign Office, and the Attorney General's Office, which they allege were complicit in their illegal detention and torture. (ANI)