Straw to face 'torture flight' quiz

JACK Straw, the Foreign Secretary, will today face a Commons interrogation over the role Britain and the European Union played in the CIA's "torture flights".

Governments and civil liberties campaigners across Europe are expressing growing concerns that the US intelligence agency is using European airports as part of a policy of seizing alleged terrorists and flying them to sites in the Middle East and north Africa where they may face torture.

Yesterday, it was suggested that officers from MI6, the British intelligence service, helped detain at least one man subjected to "extraordinary rendition" and subsequent torture.

Binyam Mohammed al- Habashi is being held at the US prison in Guantanamo Bay, where he told his lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, that two MI6 officers were involved in his transfer from Pakistani custody to the hands of the CIA.

He claims he was flown to CIA sites in Morocco and Afghanistan where he was repeatedly tortured.

Mr Straw is likely to face questions about that case and several others when he appears before MPs on the Foreign Affairs Committee today.

Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, has said that torture is never justified, but ministers have admitted effectively turning a blind eye to CIA use of British airfields.

CIA-controlled planes have repeatedly landed at UK civil and military airports, including several sites in Scotland. But ministers say that no records are kept of those landings and no questions are asked about the people on board or where they might be going.