UK Complained to US About Terror Suspect Torture, Says Ex-MI...

Speaking at a meeting at the House of Lords, Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, the former head of MI5, revealed last night that the UK government had protested to the US over the torture of terror suspects. She also said the Americans concealed from Britain the waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the September 2001 attacks. "The Americans were very keen that people like us did not discover what they were doing," she told parliamentarians. She also admitted MI5 were slow to recognise that the US was torturing detainees. Manningham-Buller was answering questions after delivering a lecture in parliament sponsored by the Mile End study group set up by Queen Mary, University of London. She said that in 2002 or 2003 she questioned how the US was able to supply Britain with intelligence gleaned from Sheikh Mohammed. "It wasn't actually until after I retired that I read that, in fact, he had been waterboarded 160 times," Manningham-Buller said. She criticised senior figures in the Bush administration, including the president himself, Dick Cheney, the vice-president, and Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary for their attitude towards the treatment of terror suspects.