The director-general, Jonathan Evans, said MI5 needed overseas help in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks by al-Qaida.
MI5 had a duty to work with overseas agencies to counter ‘imminent’ al-Qaida threat, says Jonathan Evans
The head of MI5 has issued a vigorous defence of the organisation’s co-operation with intelligence agencies known to use torture, saying that it thwarted many terrorist attacks after 9/11 and saved British lives.
Speaking publicly for the first time about the mounting concern over British involvement in the torture of terrorism suspects overseas, Jonathan Evans, the director-general of the security service, said the country had quickly needed help to understand the nature of the threat from al-Qaida at a time when another attack could have been imminent.
“In my view we would have been derelict in our duty if we had not worked, circumspectly, with overseas liaisons who were in a position to provide intelligence that could safeguard this country from attack,” he said.
Speaking at his old university, Bristol, last night, Evans said he did not defend “the abuses that have recently come to light within the US system since 9/11″. He said working with the intelligence agencies of other countries that he did not identify had posed “a real dilemma” for MI5 officers working in difficult and at times dangerous circumstances.
“Given the pressing need to understand and uncover al-Qaida’s plans, were we to deal, however circumspectly, with those security services who had experience of working against al-Qaida on their own territory? Or were we to refuse to deal with them, accepting that in so doing we would be cutting off a potentially vital source of information that would prevent attacks in the west?”
Evans defended the current system of oversight of MI5 and the other main intelligence agencies, MI6 and GCHQ, by ministers, retired judges and a committee of MPs and peers, the intelligence and security committee (ISC).
This year, parliament’s joint committee on human rights (JCHR) condemned the current arrangements, saying MI5 was “woefully” unaccountable and there needed to be an independent inquiry into allegations of complicity in torture.
Evans insisted: “It would be self-defeating to have such onerous and detailed scrutiny that the operational effectiveness and responsiveness of the service was seriously impaired. Equally, accountability must be sufficiently robust to ensure that any inappropriate action on the part of the service comes to light.”
He pledged that MI5 would not conceal any relevant information from the courts that are due to consider claims being brought against the security service and the Home Office by a number of victims of alleged torture.
His speech did not address charges that once a policy had been devised that allowed MI5 and MI6 officers to interrogate detainees whom they knew were being tortured by others, that same policy was used to facilitate torture.
In January 2002, according to a report by the ISC, MI5 and MI6 officers interrogating detainees in Afghanistan were told they did not need to intervene to prevent those prisoners from being abused by the US military.
“Given that they are not within our custody or control, the law does not require you to intervene to prevent this,” the officers were told. A number of international law experts have since questioned the legality of this advice.
This policy was then employed in other countries. In May 2002 in Pakistan, for example, an MI5 officer interrogated Binyam Mohamed, a British resident, despite knowing he was being tortured. Read full article…
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