Cases filed by two Guantánamo Bay prisoners allege MI5 and MI6 were complicit in their mistreatment
The UK government’s decades-long efforts to keep details of its intelligence agencies’ involvement in the CIA’s notorious post-9/11 torture programme hidden will face an “unprecedented” challenge this week as two cases are brought before a secretive court.
The cases, filed by two prisoners held at the US military prison at Guantánamo Bay, will be heard across a rare four-day trial at the investigatory powers tribunal (IPT), which has been investigating claims the UK’s intelligence agencies were complicit in their mistreatment.
Starting on Tuesday, the trial will place a spotlight back on what is considered one of British intelligence’s darkest chapters, reviving longstanding questions about the extent of the UK’s involvement in the CIA’s kidnapping and detention of terrorism suspects in a global network of secret prisons known as black sites.
The hearings begin six years after ministers shelved a judicial inquiry into alleged UK complicity, which David Cameron, the prime minister who ordered it, once said was necessary as “the longer these questions remain unanswered, the bigger the stain on our reputation as a country”.
