LONDON – Former president Pervez Musharraf claimed in comments released on Monday that Britain never clearly demanded that British citizens not be tortured by Pakistani security services. As Britain prepares to open an inquiry into claims that its agents were complicit in the torture of terror suspects, Pakistan’s former military ruler said London’s stance may have been a “tacit approval of whatever we were doing”.
In an interview with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), Musharraf strongly indicated that Pakistani intelligence agents used torture to extract information from terror suspects, although he did not say whether Britons were subjected to such methods.
He claimed he did not recall being told by the British that the Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) should not use torture on British subjects. “Never. Never once, I don’t remember it all,” he said. “Maybe they wanted us to continue to do whatever we were doing; it was a tacit approval of whatever we were doing,” he added. “We are dealing with vicious people, and you have to get information. Now if you are extremely decent, we then don’t get any information – we need to allow leeway to the intelligence operatives, the people who interrogate,” said Musharraf.
Elizabeth Manningham-Buller, former director of British domestic intelligence service MI5, denied Musharraf’s claims. “There was no tacit approval of torture,” she said.
The row in Britain centres on the case of former Guantanamo Bay detainee Binyam Mohammed, an Ethiopian-born British resident who claims he was tortured into admitting terror charges with the knowledge of British security services. His comments were strongly denied by former British security chiefs, who have mounted a fight-back against the claims that their agents colluded in torture.
