As the Guardian explained yesterday, “This is the first time that the information has entered the public domain.
I’m reproducing David Davis’ statement in full in an accompanying article, because of its enormous significance.
What makes this case particularly shocking, as Davis also explained - and repeated for emphasis - is that all this took place even though Ahmed had been “kept under surveillance” in the UK “for about a year” before departing for Pakistan, and that “during that time, evidence was collected, on the basis of which he was subsequently convicted.” The officer would therefore be aware that ‘suggesting’ arrest was equivalent to ‘suggesting’ torture.” That is unsurprising, as it is common public knowledge in Pakistan. On Tuesday evening, Britain’s secret torture policy was blown wide open when, in the House of Commons, David Davis MP used the protection of parliamentary privilege to tell the House how, in 2006, the British government and the security services allowed Rangzieb Ahmed, a British citizen, to travel to Pakistan, where they “suggested” to the Inter Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), Pakistan’s most notorious intelligence agency, that he should be arrested.Īs Davis explained, “We … know that the intelligence officer who wrote to the Pakistanis did so in full knowledge of the normal methods used by the ISI against terrorist suspects that it holds.