Al-Qaida man challenges conviction over 'Britain's role in his torture'

Rangzieb Ahmed was unlawfully interrogated and tortured in Pakistan with complicity of UK authorities, claims his lawyer

• Ian Cobain
• guardian.co.uk,  Article history
• Tuesday 30 November 2010 16.54 GMT
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Rangzieb Ahmed arrives at Heathrow airport from Islamabad, Pakistan, in September 2007. Photograph: Dennis Stone / Rex Features A British man found guilty of being a senior member of al-Qaida launched his appeal against conviction today on the grounds that the British government was complicit in the torture he suffered before he went on trial. Rangzieb Ahmed, 35, from Rochdale, Greater Manchester, is serving a life sentence at a Yorkshire jail after being convicted of membership of al-Qaida and of directing a terrorist organisation. His lawyers told the court of appeal today that his trial should not have been allowed to go ahead because of the role the UK played in his unlawful detention in Pakistan before he was deported to the UK, and because the courts had a responsibility to take a stand against torture. "He was unlawfully detained, he was interrogated, and he was tortured," Joel Bennathan QC, for Ahmed, told the court. "We say the United Kingdom was complicit in these acts. While being interrogated, it is our case that he was asked many, many, questions about events in Manchester which were, a year and a bit later, to form the basis for his arrest in Manchester, and prosecution in Manchester." Bennathan said the courts had made clear in the past that the law had a responsibility to prevent the executive branch of government from resorting to torture in times of emergency. Quoting the late Lord Bingham, a former lord chief justice, he said: "Torture is repugnant to the fundamental principles of English law, and it is repugnant to reason, justice and humanity." Ahmed was convicted largely on the basis of evidence collected while he was under surveillance in Dubai and the UK in 2005. He was not arrested at that time and instead was permitted to go to Pakistan. There he was detained by the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, an agency notorious for its use of torture. A previous court hearing was told that Manchester police and MI5 officers drew up a list of questions to be put to Ahmed by the Pakistani agents. He was deported to the UK 13 months later with three fingernails missing from his left hand. He was deported to the UK 13 months later with three fingernails missing from his left hand, pulled out with pliers. Bennathan told the court that after being detained by the ISI, Ahmed was deprived of sleep for about six days. "He was asked lots of questions and he was told 'you must speak, everybody who comes here speaks'." Ahmed was then shown a piece of wood with a rubber strip on one end. "He was told initially just to touch it." Then he was stripped naked and whipped. Throughout this period, Bennathan said, Ahmed was "asked many, many, questions about people and events in Manchester". Pliers were then produced and Ahmed was held down. "One of his fingernails was first twisted and pulled back, and then pulled out altogether." Two other fingernails were removed on subsequent days, Bennathan said. Bennathan said: "Others came tovisit and question him. He was visited, he said, by officers of the UK security services on one occasion. Officers from the security services of the United States questioned him from time to time over a six-month period." Bennathan told the court that it would need to consider a definition of complicity. The UK had an obligation, as a signatory to the UN convention against torture, to consider complicity in torture to be a crime. Any argument about legal definitions of complicity, and about any extent to which complicity in torture could be said to taint subsequent prosecution, appear likely to be heard behind closed doors, however. The Guardian, Daily Mail, Times, Independent, BBC and BSkyB have all asked the court to distinguish between evidence that is damaging to the national interest, and that which is simply embarrassing, and to hear as much of the appeal in open court as possible. After today's opening of the hearing, the court began to sit in camera, with the media and the public excluded. It remains unclear how much of the hearing will be open to the public. Before Ahmed went on trial at Manchester crown court in September 2008 an attempt was made by his lawyers to have the prosecution halted on the grounds that to proceed would amount to an abuse of the process of the court. Details of the MI5, MI6 and police operation that led to Ahmed's detention and interrogation in Pakistan, were heard largely in camera, before that trial. The Crown Prosecution Service has denied that the courtroom secrecy concealed from the public evidence of official wrongdoing, but has repeatedly failed to explain why it did apply for the use of in camera procedure. The trial judge then produced two judgments: one to be made public, and one stored in a safe that was brought to court by an unidentified government official. In his public judgment, the judge said: "I hope I choose my words carefully: I am not satisfied that the British authorities assisted or encouraged the Pakistanis to detain and/or ill-treat Rangzieb Ahmed in such a way as to amount to an abuse of the process of the court and, accordingly, I dismiss the application for a stay." He did not, however, rule that there had been no British complicity in Ahmed's unlawful detention and alleged torture. In a sign of the UK authorities' sensitivity about the case, Greater Manchester police officers threatened to arrest a Guardian reporter for contempt of court after the newspaper reported that police and MI5 handed lists of questions to the Pakistanis after Ahmed was detained. They were unaware that this fact had been disclosed in open court during the legal argument, and apparently believed it should have been heard only in secret. Under protection of parliamentary privilege, the Tory MP David Davis revealed to the Commons last year some of what he said he knew of the secret police, MI5 and MI6 operation that led to Ahmed's detention and torture. Davis said that after Ahmed left the UK for Pakistan, the British government alerted the Pakistani authorities to his arrival. He said that a British intelligence officer then suggested to the Pakistani authorities that Ahmed be detained, knowing that this amounted to suggesting he be tortured. "The authorities know full well that this story is an evidential showcase for the policy of complicity in torture, should that evidence ever come out," Davis said. During the part of Ahmed's appeal that was heard in open court, Bennathan said that parliament's joint committee on human rights had concluded that the government would be complicit in torture if it asked an overseas intelligence group, notorious for its use of torture, to detain an individual, and handed over questions to that agency, and sent its own agents to question the detainee. The hearing continues and the court is expected to reserve its judgment until the new year.