More spygames in the bullshit "War of Terror"

MI5 betrayed me to CIA, says former Guantanamo detenu

Hasan Suroor

LONDON: An Iraqi resident of Britain has accused British intelligence agencies of “betraying” him to the CIA and implicating him in terror charges which led him to spend four years in the notorious U.S. detention centre in Guantanamo Bay.

Bisher al-Rawi, who was born in Iraq but grew up in Britain, was kidnapped by CIA agents during a business trip to Gambia in 2002 after a tip-off from MI5 that he was an extremist. In a series of interviews to British media, Mr Al-Rawi (39), has given a chilling account of his abduction and captivity. He was one of the victims of the CIA’s controversial policy of “extraordinary rendition” which involved kidnapping terror suspects and flying them to secret detention centres where they were tortured.

In a scathing report last week, Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee criticised MI5 for its role in the abduction and “rendition” of Mr Al-Rawi. It said that although MI5 knew that Mr Al-Rawi was to be “rendered” by Americans in breach of international law against torture, it did not intervene as he was not a British citizen.

Mr Al-Rawi, who had been an MI5 informant, told Channel 4 News on Monday that he supplied valuable information to the agency about Abu Qatada, an extremist cleric, when the latter went underground in 2002 to avoid arrest. He said he helped MI5 without expecting any rewards in return.

“I entered this relationship [with MI5] with goodwill and I think what they’ve done to me is very, very bad… My experience was very, very bad from beginning to end,” he said.

Mr Al-Rawi said that after being arrested, he was hooded and flown to Afghanistan where he was thrown into CIA’s dreaded “Dark Prison”. He alleged that he was tortured and denied food. Later, he was taken to Guantanamo Bay on a CIA “ghost flight”.

Mr Al-Rawi, who was finally released in March this year, said that MI5 agents visited him in Guantanamo Bay and promised to help but when he called them as witnesses during his trial they refused.

“I thought their promises to me... meant if I just ask for them everything will be clarified and this whole episode is over. Unfortunately, the authorities in the U.K. refused to offer any explanation or say anything about the situation, and that did not help me at all,” he said.

Original article posted here.