Revealed: torture centre linked to MI5 (Guardian Article)

Revealed: torture centre linked to MI5

By Ian Cobain

Monday May 12 2008

A secret interrogation centre in Pakistan where British terrorism suspects are alleged to have been tortured after UK authorities had them arrested has been found by the Guardian.

The centre, run by the country's Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI), is in the Saddar district of Rawalpindi. It is surrounded by high walls and watchtowers, and bristling with surveillance cameras.

So notorious is the ISI that local photographers are reluctant to take pictures of the centre, although satellite images are readily available.

A British citizen says he was driven there in 2004, held for 10 months and tortured. Salahuddin Amin, now aged 33, had moved to Pakistan three years earlier from Luton, Bedfordshire.

Amin was eventually returned to the UK and successfully prosecuted. His trial heard that he was interviewed by officers from the British security service MI5 several times during his detention. His lawyers allege ISI officers beat and whipped him, and threatened him with an electric drill, in between the MI5 interviews, and that the British officers must have known he was being mistreated.

SNIP

Among other people thought to have been tortured at the Rawalpindi centre is an innocent taxi driver who was caught up in the investigation of Amin. Ezaj Rabanni, 38, was interrogated for several days about the whereabouts of Amin, who had been his passenger several times and whom the ISI had been unable to locate.

"They beat me for half an hour or so on the first day and they whipped me with a leather belt," Rabanni said in a statement taken before Amin was tried at the Old Bailey. "I couldn't see them because I had a hood over my head the whole time. They kept asking me about Salahuddin, asking me where he was. They beat me the second day and the third day. I couldn't protect myself - my hands were shackled behind my back the whole time.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/may/12/terror.centre