British ministers and spy chiefs in power after 9/11 are facing new calls to explain their “inexcusable” actions after two damning parliamentary reports set out the scale of UK involvement in the torture and kidnap of terrorist suspects.



Theresa May is also under fire for blocking key intelligence figures from giving evidence to the parliamentary intelligence and security committee (ISC), which produced the two reports.

The committee found the UK intelligence agencies to be complicit in hundreds of incidents of torture and rendition, mainly in partnership with the US in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo.



In spite of restrictions on its investigation, the ISC produced a mass of detail that amounts to a major indictment of the intelligence services, not least that the UK was in breach of the international prohibition on torture.

“In our view, the UK tolerated actions, and took others, that we regard as inexcusable,” said the committee’s chairman, Dominic Grieve.

Jack Straw, the foreign secretary from 2001-06, will face questions over how much he knew and, given that accusations of torture and rendition were widespread at the time in the press, some will want to know why he did not ask for a briefing.

A key passage in the report said MI6 “sought and obtained authorisation from the foreign secretary” for the costs of funding a plane involved in an individual rendition case.

Leading human rights groups issued a joint statement saying the ISC’s reports “revealed shocking new details of UK complicity in torture and rendition” – adding these were “just the tip of the iceberg”.



The statement, issued on behalf of the seven groups, including Amnesty International UK, Reprieve and Liberty, called for an independent inquiry.



Reprieve suggested there should be a police investigation: “The police must also be free to follow the evidence and pursue prosecutions against those who were ultimately in charge and responsible for these appalling actions.”

A Westminster security official said MI6 was confronted with a new environment which it had not prepared or trained for after 9/11. “Given the circumstances, it is understandable, yet regrettable, that, occasionally, we did not get things right.”

But he stressed the intelligence agency had learned from the experience, with clear guidance for MI6 and an expanded legal team. “In Whitehall, there is tighter ministerial engagement in approving operations,” the security official said.

One of the reports addresses the mistreatment and rendition of detainees between 2001 and 2010, while the other considers current issues, mainly the guidance given to spies by their head offices about how to respond when confronted with torture or rendition.

Its publication came a month after May issued a public apology to Abdel Hakim Belhaj who was kidnapped in 2004 with the assistance of MI6 and flown to one of Muammar Gaddafi’s prisons, along with his pregnant wife Fatima Boudchar.

The British ambassador in Turkey, Dominick Chilcott (right) hands over a letter of apology from the UK government to Libyan dissident Abdel Hakim Belhaj. Photograph: Lefteris Pitarakis/AP

The committee, which began its inquiry four years ago, pinned blame not only on junior intelligence officers in the field but also on senior officials.

“It is difficult to comprehend how those at the top of the office did not recognise the pattern of mistreatment by the US,” the committee said.

In response to the findings of the committee, Straw, who had direct responsibility for MI6 and the surveillance agency GCHQ, said he had been unaware of much of what was revealed in the report.

“Although I was formally responsible for both SIS [the Secret Intelligence Service, also known as MI6] and GCHQ during my period as foreign secretary [June 2001 to May 2006], I have today learned much about the activities and the approach of these agencies of which I was not aware before,” he said.



He did not reply to a Guardian request for comment about a key passage in one of the reports about his role in a rendition flight.

The passage said that, in September 2004, MI6 “sought and obtained authorisation from the foreign secretary to pay a large share” of the costs of funding a aircraft to render a detainee from a secret location to another secret location the following month. The foreign secretary – Straw – gave the authorisation.

Grieve said that if his inquiry had continued, he would have called on Straw and the former home secretary David Blunkett “to examine what they understood to be the situation at the time and explain why a briefing was not requested”. He had only abandoned the inquiry, which began three years ago, because he could not take it any further. He appeared frustrated that May blocked a request for evidence from four intelligence officers central to events.

“The government has denied us access to those individuals. The committee has, therefore, concluded, reluctantly, that it must draw a line under the inquiry,” he said.

In a statement, May expressed pride in the work of the intelligence services, for often working in the most difficult circumstance, but said it was “only right that they should be held to the highest possible standards in protecting [the UK’s] national security.”

Lord Macdonald, the former director of prosecutions, described May’s blocking of the inquiry as “a scandal” and that her justification for doing so was “bogus”.

The ISC found 13 incidents where British intelligence officers witnessed at first hand a detainee being mistreated by others, 25 where UK personnel were told by detainees they had been mistreated by others and 128 incidents of which they were informed by foreign intelligence officers.



It identified two cases in which UK personnel were “party to mistreatment by others”. One has been investigated by the Metropolitan police and the committee raised the question of whether the investigation into the other case should now be reopened.

May let these people down through her own political cowardice Lord Macdonald, the former director of prosecutions

The committee found “no smoking gun” to indicate the UK agencies deliberately overlooked reports of mistreatment and rendition by the US as a matter of institutional policy. It said: “The evidence clearly suggests that the UK saw itself as the poor relation to the US, and was distinctly uncomfortable at the prospect of complaining to its host.”



UK personnel, in 232 cases, continued to supply questions or intelligence to other services despite knowledge or suspicion of mistreatment, as well as 198 cases where UK personnel received information from foreign services which had been obtained from detainees who had been mistreated or suspected of mistreatment.



Examples of the extent of complicity are scattered throughout the reports. In one exchange, the US sent a message to MI5 about rendition to which the UK agency replied it agreed with the way forward and that, once the detainee had been removed, “we would be grateful for real-time access”.

The investigation was ordered by then prime minister, David Cameron, in 2010. A former judge produced an interim report but, frustrated by too many unanswered questions, the inquiry was passed to the intelligence committee.

Macdonald said May had derailed the ISC’s inquiry by refusing to allow it to interview more junior MI6 and MI5 officers.

“Her purported reason for refusing the ISC access to the officers actually involved in these events – that there was ‘legal uncertainty over the protection that would be offered to officers appearing as witnesses before the committee’ – is completely bogus, as she and her advisers must have known,” he said.

“This was a contemptuous and cynical response to a grave national scandal, doing nothing to develop public confidence in the integrity of the agencies, most of whose members are dedicated public servants whose work is essential and beyond reproach. She has let these people down through her own political cowardice.”