MI5 misled MPs over Briton's secret rendition, court told

MI5 misled MPs about what it knew of the whereabouts of Binyam Mohamed, a British resident who says he was tortured before being secretly rendered to Guantánamo Bay, the high court was told yesterday.

Mohamed's lawyers also accused MI5 of not looking "too hard" at what was being done to him. The claims were made as the government came under renewed pressure after a former senior American official told Time magazine that the US imprisoned and interrogated at least one terrorist suspect on Diego Garcia, the UK territory in the Indian Ocean, contradicting repeated assurances by David Miliband, the foreign secretary.

Lawyers for Mohamed yesterday demanded the release of information in the government's hands which, they say, shows he was subject to extraordinary rendition, held incommunicado, and tortured. The government argues that disclosing the information would jeopardise Britain's diplomatic and intelligence relationship with the US.

Ben Jaffey, counsel for Mohamed, told the court that in his witness statement an MI5 officer in the case said Britain's security and intelligence agences "did not know where he [Mohamed] was" after he was flown out of Pakistan in 2002.

Yet MI5 suggested to parliament's intelligence and security committee that it believed Mohamed was in US custody, Jaffey said. That was why in its report on the case last year, the committee concluded it was "understandable" MI5 did not seek assurances about Mohamed's treatment. The committee was "not given the full picture", Jaffey told the high court. MI5 suggested then that Mohamed was in US custody, yet it now conceded that he was in a "location unknown", he said.

It has emerged since that Mohamed was rendered to Morocco, where he says he was brutally treated, and that the US was aware of that at the time.

"The security service did not look too hard at what was going on", Jaffey told Lord Justice Thomas. The former Kensington caretaker alleges he was repeatedly slashed in the genitals with a razor blade while being held in Morocco.

The judge said the case raised "many and very troublesome issues". The court will deliver its ruling later this month.

Time magazine's anonymous source said that a CIA counter-terrorism official twice said "high-value prisoners" had been held and questioned on Diego Garcia. Reprieve, the legal action charity, said that the source proved British territory had been used for "kidnapping, extraordinary rendition, illegal imprisonment and possibly torture".

In February, the US administration admitted that, contrary to previous assurances, two CIA "rendition" flights carrying terrorist suspects seized abroad had landed on Diego Garcia in 2002.

Last month Mr Miliband said the US had pledged no further US intelligence flights had since landed on British territory.

A Foreign Office spokesman said yesterday: "Our intelligence and counter-terrorism relationship with the US is vital to the national security of the United Kingdom.

"We accept US assurances on rendition in good faith. But if others have definitive evidence of rendition through the UK or our overseas territories, including Diego Garcia, then we will raise it with the US authorities."