UK prosecutors consider torture charges against officers from MI5 and MI6

An MI5 officer who interviewed the former Guantanamo Bay detainee Binyam Mohamed and an MI6 officer involved in an unrelated case are waiting to find out if they will be prosecuted following an 11-month Scotland Yard investigation.

The inquiry into the MI5 officer, known as Witness B, is believed to be at an advanced stage, with police seeking advice from the Crown Prosecution Service on whether charges could be brought either under the Criminal Justice Act or the Human Rights Act.

Both cases were referred to police by the intelligence services, following internal reviews of the role of officers in interrogating terrorism suspects.

Details about Witness B’s alleged complicity in the torture of Mr Mohamed emerged on Wednesday when the Court of Appeal ordered the publication of previously censored information about MI5’s knowledge of his treatment.

The court said that Mr Mohamed had been deprived of sleep, shackled and threatened with the suggestion that he would “disappear” and that MI5 were fully aware of this.

Mr Mohamed has also claimed that Witness B fed questions to his CIA interrogators in the knowledge that he was being tortured.

The Master of the Rolls, Lord Neuberger, said in a draft judgment that MI5 did not “respect human rights or abjure participation in coercive interrogation techniques” and that “this was particularly true of Witness B”.

His comments were deleted from the final version of the judgment after an intervention from a barrister representing the Foreign Secretary, but were referred to in a copy of a letter which was leaked to the media.