The trial in London, described as “unprecedented” by UK-based anti-torture organisation Redress, is being held before the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT), the judicial body that handles complaints against British intelligence agencies, and runs until Friday.
Redress initiated proceedings with a 2021 complaint against several agencies, including MI5 and MI6 – the domestic and foreign intelligence services – for their “possible involvement” in the torture of Mustapha al-Hawsawi.
The question is whether the agencies were “complicit” with the CIA by “providing questions or information” to US agents for use during Al-Hawsawi’s interrogations, or by “receiving information” obtained during his interrogations, Redress lawyer Edward Craven told court.
Hawsawi was captured in Pakistan in 2003, accused by the Americans of participating in the Sept 11, 2001 attacks on the US.
The Saudi national, born in 1968, is still being held at the US military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba more than two decades later.
“There is no doubt that he was subjected to the most brutal torture,” the lawyer said, citing waterboarding, sleep deprivation and rape.
He was held in secret CIA detention facilities, known as “black sites”, in Afghanistan, Lithuania, Morocco and Romania, said Craven.
CIA officials asked interrogators in 2003 to “press” Hawsawi for information on possible plans to attack the UK, according to information recently made public by US authorities.
The other Guantanamo detainee at the centre of the case is Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, suspected of masterminding the attack on the USS Cole off the coast of Yemen in 2000, which killed 17 people.
The trial “offers an unprecedented level of judicial scrutiny into a shameful chapter of UK history, one that has long, and repeatedly, been kept hidden,” said Chris Esdaile, legal counsel for Redress.
UK authorities will respond to the allegations in court on Thursday.
A British parliamentary report concluded in 2018 that the UK had tolerated the mistreatment of prisoners held by US authorities on terrorism charges.
“That the US, and others, were mistreating detainees is beyond doubt, as is the fact that (British) agencies… were aware of this at an early point,” the report stated.