Ministers apologise as they admit Britain DID hand over two terror suspects to U.S. for 'torture flights'

Gordon Brown is under mounting pressure to order an independent inquiry into 'torture flights' after it emerged that terror suspects captured by British forces were flown by the U.S. to Afghanistan for interrogation.



Defence Secretary John Hutton apologised to Parliament yesterday as he admitted that British officials handed over two men detained in Iraq to U.S. authorities in 2004.



The men - said to be members of a group linked to Al Qaeda - were flown to an Afghan jail, where they remain in a legal limbo.



Admission: John Hutton (left) told MPs Britain was involved in extraordinary rendition putting Gordon Brown under pressure to order an independent inquiry



The astonishing admission is the closest yet to confirming allegations that Britain knew terror suspects were being secretly flown to countries where prisoners face torture.



Mr Hutton told shocked MPs that two senior ministers, the then Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and Home Secretary Charles Clarke, were given details of the transfer but had not realised its 'significance'.



The Defence Secretary said he regretted that 'inaccurate' information on British involvement with so-called 'extraordinary rendition' had previously been given to MPs by his department.



The Government has repeatedly denied colluding with flights carrying suspects to countries where torture is practised. The U.S. has been accused of using extraordinary rendition hundreds of times since the terror attacks of September 11, 2001.



Papers prepared for the then home secretary Charles Clarke (left) and foreign secretary Jack Straw included references to an extraordinary rendition case

'Ghost' flights are said to have flown terror suspects - chained hand and foot and blindfolded - to secret CIA prisons in third-party states such as Jordan, Syria, Morocco and Uzbekistan, as well as Romania and Poland, with the aim of keeping detainees beyond judicial oversight.



Most suspects have finished up in Guantanamo Bay.



Campaigners believe Britain has breached international law by collaborating with the transportation and interrogation of such suspects.



Last night the peer who led an EU-wide inquiry into rendition told the Daily Mail that serious concern remained over 170 more flights.



Liberal Democrat Baroness Ludford said there was evidence of 170 stopovers at UK airports by CIAoperated aircraft flying to or from countries where prisoners face torture.

'This is the first actual admission of complicity in extraordinary rendition,' she said.



'It is another breach in the wall of denials and cover-ups over UK official complicity in torture and secret detention that has been built over the last seven years.



'But the unsatisfactory drip-feed of partial revelations must cease. We need instead full scrutiny via a comprehensive, independent inquiry. The British people are owed an apology by Gordon Brown.

'The best way for the Government to redeem itself is through coming clean about the whole sorry story which has dragged Britain's reputation through the gutter.'



Mr Hutton told MPs that British officials had been aware of the transfer of two prisoners, captured by UK forces in and around Baghdad, from British to U.S. custody in 2004. He said they were members of Lashkar e Tayyiba, a proscribed organisation with links to Al Qaeda.



The U.S. moved them to Afghanistan because of a lack of relevant linguists necessary to interrogate them effectively in Iraq, he said. The U.S. has now told Britain it is not 'possible or desirable' to move the individuals, who are still in Afghanistan, either back to Iraq or their home countries.



But Mr Hutton said the U.S. authorities had assured Britain the pair had not been mistreated and were being held in a 'humane, safe and secure environment'.



He said 'brief references' to the case had been included in papers sent to Mr Straw and Mr Clarke in April 2006.



He added: 'In retrospect, it is clear to me that the transfer to Afghanistan of these two individuals should have been questioned at the time.'



The incident came to light after an internal review of detentions in Iraq and Afghanistan, which has revealed a series of other errors in details previously released to Parliament.



The Foreign Office is also understood to be trawling through its records to check whether its previous assurances to MPs are accurate.



Last year, Foreign Secretary David Miliband had to apologise to Parliament as he revealed that on two occasions in 2002, flights carrying terror suspects stopped at the airbase on the British Indian Ocean territory of Diego Garcia.















