Six Met police officers are accused of 'waterboarding' drug-raid suspects

Published on Wednesday 10 June 2009 00:31

SIX Metropolitan Police officers have been suspended after they were accused of dunking suspects' heads in buckets of water, it emerged last night.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) confirmed it was investigating the conduct of Enfield-based officers during drugs raids in the borough in November last year, in which four men and a woman were arrested in Enfield and Tottenham.

The allegations have already caused a drugs trial to be abandoned.

It was also reported last night that the officers involved have been accused of waterboarding - a type of simulated drowning, which is almost universally condemned in Britain as torture.

The technique has controversially been used by CIA interrogators to squeeze information out of suspected terrorists.

It involves water being poured onto a cloth covering the suspect's face, causing them to feel they are on the point of suffocation.

Neither the IPCC nor Scotland Yard would comment on the nature of the allegations, but sources said the officers were accused of pushing suspects' heads into buckets of water.

The 'torture' claims are part of an investigation which also includes allegations that officers stole suspects' property and fabricated evidence.

Scotland Yard is currently in the process of appointing a new police commander in Enfield in a move that has has been interpreted as Sir Paul Stephenson, the Met Commissioner, trying to enforce a stricter regime to supervise officers.

The waterboarding claims come hot on the heels of a controversy over police conduct that was fuelled by hundreds of public complaints over brutality at the G20 protests.

Police said that in the case being investigated for 'water-boarding' claims they found a large amount of cannabis and the suspects had been charged with itrafficking a class C drug.

The case was dropped 16 weeks later when the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) ruled that it would not have been in the public interest to proceed.

Had the torture claims been revealed during the trial, they may have compromised the criminal investigation into the six officers.

None of the officers under suspicion has been arrested.

Last night, the IPCC said: "This is an ongoing criminal investigation and as such all six officers will be criminally interviewed under caution."

A Scotland Yard spokesman said: "These are serious allegations that raise real concern. The Met does not tolerate conduct which falls below the standards that the public and the many outstanding Met officers and staff expect."