London: A former British intelligence officer is to break ranks with the MI5 spy agency to present evidence the security service knew that inmates at the Guantanamo Bay detention centre were being tortured.
The former senior officer is seeking to give evidence to a UK parliamentary inquiry about how MI5 officials witnessed detainees being tortured at Camp X-Ray and Camp Delta - two of the Guantanamo prisons - in December 2002, 'The Sunday Times' reported.
Even though the former officer is trying to get official permission to give evidence, it is thought to be unprecedented for a former member of staff to defy the agency in this way.
Senior security sources have told the newspaper that the testimony will prove for the first time that MI5 was fully aware detainees at Guantanamo were systematically abused and tortured.
Details of the torture were disclosed during a series of top-level meetings held at Thames House, MI5's London headquarters. The newspaper quotes sources as having said that a significant number of high-ranking officials, including MI5's senior management board, lawyers and senior officers, held confidential "torture" meetings on several occasions during 2002.
The former officer, who had access to the country's most important state secrets, is expected to tell House of Commons' Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) that the abuse was conducted by trained interrogators from America's intelligence agency, the CIA.
It is also understood that the former officer's evidence will include claims that MI5 officials witnessed inmates in Guantanamo being chained, hooded, "waterboarded" and subjected to mental abuse.
MI5 has always maintained it has never participated in or condoned the use of torture as an interrogation technique. But several former detainees have claimed MI5 and the British government were aware they inmates were being abused while at Guantanamo Bay, in Cuba, and also at a CIA prison at Bagram airbase, in Afghanistan.
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