British ex-spy chief accuses U.S. of hiding torture cases

Eliza Manningham-Buller said Tuesday she had not understood why alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed had been willing to talk to American interrogators.

She said she only discovered he had been waterboarded when she read about it after her retirement in 2007.

“The Americans were very keen that people like us did not discover what they were doing,” she said in a specially arranged lecture at Britain's upper house of parliament in London.

The U.S. had been “very keen to conceal from us what was happening.”

Her comments come as the spy agency hits back at claims it colluded with U.S. counterparts in the torture of terror suspects.

The allegations were sparked by a British court's decision last month to release details of U.S. torture of a former Guantanamo Bay inmate.

Ex-prisoner Binyam Mohamed — who was born in Ethiopia but is a British resident — has charged he was asked questions by U.S. interrogators that could only have come from the British intelligence services.

Ministers and current MI5 head Jonathan Evans have strongly denied the accusations of collusion, but there were still question marks over when Britain knew about the U.S. apparently changing its rules on torture following the 9/11 attacks.

Manningham-Buller's remarks could put the intelligence-sharing relationship between Washington and London, already strained by last month's court decision which angered the U.S., under further pressure.

Subscribe to The China Post and save 25%. Click here

SharePrintEmail

Write a Comment

Terms

Enter your comments - 3000 characters max

Type in image code

Submit

 Receive China Post promos
 Respond to this email