Harsh US interrogation kept from Britain

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The United States deliberately kept Britain in the dark about the harsh methods it used when interrogating suspected terrorists, the former head of Britain's domestic spy agency has said.

Speaking at a meeting in the House of Lords Eliza Manningham-Buller, head of MI5 between 2002 and 2007, said she had been unaware that the United States was using inhumane treatment during the questioning of detainees.

"The Americans were very keen that people like us did not discover what they were doing," Manningham-Buller was quoted as saying on the website of London's Evening Standard paper.

The government lost a legal battle last month to prevent the disclosure of US intelligence material relating to allegations of "cruel and inhuman" treatment of suspects by the CIA, leading to accusations that MI5 knew about the use of such treatment.

Judges disclosed information given to MI5 by the CIA that Binyam Mohamed, an Ethiopian citizen and British resident who has been fighting to prove that he was tortured and that British authorities knew about it, had been shackled, threatened and deprived of sleep in US custody.

Manningham-Buller said she had asked how the United States was able to supply Britain with information gleaned from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, accused of masterminding the September 11, 2001 attacks on US targets.

"I said to my staff, 'Why is he talking?' because our experience of Irish prisoners, Irish terrorists, was that they never said anything," she said.

"They said, well, the Americans say he is very proud of his achievements when questioned about it. It wasn't actually until after I retired that I read that, in fact, he had been waterboarded (subjected to simulated drowning) 160 times."

She said the British government had complained about the mistreatment but refused to give details, the paper said.

The current MI5 director general, Jonathan Evans, has denied allegations that Britain colluded in torture.

MI5, Britain's domestic security and counter-intelligence agency, investigates terrorist plots against Britain, where suicide bombings on the London transport system killed 52 people in 2005.

- Reuters