Former Guantanamo Bay detainee sues British intelligence agencies over torture claim

A former detainee at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp filed a lawsuit against the British government Wednesday, alleging the country's spy agencies knew he was being abused in U.S. custody yet allowed his continued interrogation.

Hundreds of detainees have been released without charge after being held for years at the U.S. prison. Several have filed suits against the U.S. government but this is the first known case charging Britain's MI5 and MI6 agencies were complicit in alleged abuse.

The case raises questions about how much power Britain had over the treatment of British detainees at U.S. camps, what constitutes mistreatment and whether British agents should have questioned prisoners amid the abuse allegations.

Tarek Dergoul, a 29-year-old British citizen, claimed in documents filed in London's High Court that he was abused and tortured while in U.S. custody in Afghanistan and at the U.S. Navy base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. After roughly two years in custody, he was released in 2004 without charge.

Telephone calls to the Pentagon seeking comment about Dergoul's allegations were not immediately returned.

Although Dergoul says British agents never abused him or threatened him, he alleges Britain's government acted illegally by obtaining information from him while they knew he was being abused or mistreated.

During his captivity, Dergoul charged, he was visited several times by British intelligence agents from MI5 or MI6. He said he told them about suffering beatings and sexual assaults, being subjected to extreme temperatures and being repeatedly attacked by the Extreme Reaction Force _ a special riot squad criticized for its techniques and use of females with Muslims.

Louise Christian, a lawyer in the firm representing Dergoul, accused the British government of failing to take a strong stand against abuse, mistreatment and torture of detainees held by U.S. authorities.

The Foreign Office, which oversees MI6, said it raised concerns about allegations of mistreatment.

"We asked the U.S. authorities to investigate these allegations and to assure us that British detainees would not be subjected to any abuse at Guantanamo Bay," said a British official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case. "We received reassurances from the U.S. authorities that the British detainees were not abused or mistreated."

A British government security official said MI5 officers interviewing detainees overseas must abide by Britain's Human Rights Act, which forbids the use of torture and inhumane or degrading treatment.

The situation is less clear if detainees are allegedly being abused or mistreated by foreign captors. But, the official said, in at least four cases, MI5 raised concerns over allegations of mistreatment of prisoners at Guantanamo, lodging official complaints with the FBI and CIA and passing along other concerns.

"Interviews (by British agents) were not carried out in those cases, the detaining authorities were notified and agents reported their concerns back to London," the official said.

The official would not say whether British agents raised concerns about Dergoul's treatment or if the four cases involved British prisoners.

Shortly after the Guantanamo camp opened, the FBI warned the Department of Defense of heavy-handed interrogations, although the documented cases of abuses did not identify the detainees or their nationalities.

In a March 2005 report, lawmakers on Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee said British intelligence agents had made a total of 15 complaints about detainee treatment in Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay and Iraq. Agents had conducted or observed around 2,000 detainee interviews by 2005, the lawmakers said.

Dergoul claims he went to Pakistan in July 2001 and later crossed into Afghanistan to purchase property.

He said a group of Afghan warlords sold him to U.S. authorities after the military campaign to oust the Taliban regime. At the U.S. camp at Bagram, he claimed, U.S. authorities held a gun to his head, beat him, threatened him and subjected him to the cold.

Dergoul said he was then sent to Kandahar, where he alleged he was hooded during regular interrogations, denied medical treatment and forced to watch as U.S. authorities ripped up the Quran.

After three months in Kandahar he was moved to Guantanamo, he said. Once there, he was regularly assaulted by the riot squad, which used pepper spray on him, beat him and put his head in the toilet, the suit charged.

He also said in the court documents that he was "shackled to the floor for up to 10 hours with no access to a toilet."

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Associated Press writer David Stringer contributed to this report.