MI5 tip-off to CIA led to men's rendition

The British domestic intelligence agency MI5 knew that two UK residents who were seized and secretly flown to Guantánamo Bay were carrying harmless items when it tipped off the CIA that they were in possession of bomb parts. The disclosure is contained in high court documents released on Mar. 27 revealing the full extent of the government's role in the US practice of "extraordinary rendition"–in this case, of Bisher al-Rawi and Jamil el-Banna, in 2002. The two men were seized in Gambia after a tip-off from MI5. British security officials had earlier detained the men at Gatwick airport before releasing them. Court documents show that their detailed travel arrangements were then given to a "foreign intelligence agency." The British government does not deny this is a reference to the CIA. In a telegram sent, apparently to the CIA, on Nov. 1, 2002, an MI5 officer said an "electronic device" which could be part of an improvised explosive device had been found on the men. But in a note to the British Foreign Office 10 days later MI5 stated that the men had been released at Gatwick "after it was assessed that this item was a commercially available battery charger that had been modified by Bisher al-Rawi in order to make it more powerful." There is no evidence that the assessment that the item was innocent was passed on to the CIA. One MI5 officer, known only as "A" in his witness statement, questioned the accuracy of a description of the battery charger as "harmless." The disclosures come as a report from the group Caged Prisoners claims evidence shows that British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, and the leader of the House of Commons, Geoff Hoon, "misled" Parliament "over their knowledge and complicity in illegal acts of rendition." It also accuses Britain's secret services of involvement in "interrogations of detainees where abuse and torture" were used in countries ranging from Morocco and Pakistan to Afghanistan and at Guantánamo Bay. The report says the security services passed "misinformation" to countries which was then used to detain and torture people from the UK. It says Britain allowed CIA rendition flights to pass through its airspace, and touch down on UK soil, en route to human rights abusing countries, despite denials by the Blair government. The documents in the court case also reveal that an MI5 officer had told Banna that he "should be able to travel [to Gambia] without a problem." MI5 also agreed that the two men's motive in traveling was a genuine plan to set up a peanut oil business in the west African country. Rawi's brother, Wahab, a British citizen, was also seized in Gambia but released. The documents, which have only now been disclosed, were prepared for the court challenge of the government's failure to petition for the release from Guantánamo Bay of Rawi, an Iraqi who fled Saddam Hussein's regime in 1985, his friend, Banna, a Jordanian-Palestinian national, and Omar Deghayes, a Libyan refugee allegedly picked up by bounty hunters in Pakistan, and their families. The high court heard that Rawi had informed for MI5 on Abu Qatada , the radical cleric the government wants to deport to Jordan. Britain was involved in the rendition or torture of 17 of its own citizens or residents, the report says. Rawi and Banna are included among Muslim men who critics say the Blair government subjected to a "subterranean system of kidnappings, ghosted to black sites, suffering abuse and torture." In a statement at Guantánamo, Rawi said he had been dressed in diapers and hooded and shackled for his transfer from Gambia by a CIA rendition team on Dec. 8, 2002. The account is corroborated by flight logs obtained by the Guardian which indicate that a Gulfstream V jet, registration N379P, arrived in Banjul, the Gambian capital, from Washington on that day. The plane arrived in Kabul, the Afghan capital, the next day via Cairo. In Afghanistan, the pair were taken to what inmates came to know as the "dark prison," a CIA jail where prisoners were held in complete darkness and subjected to non-stop loud music.