Ken Clarke promises another judge-led inquiry into claims by two Libyans once police investigations are completed
The judge-led inquiry into the UK's alleged role in the torture and rendition of detainees after the 9/11 attacks, already boycotted by most human rights groups, has been scrapped by the government.
The surprise decision to abandon the investigation led by Sir Peter Gibson into MI5 and MI6 officers' participation, which carried out only preparatory research, was announced in parliament by the justice secretary, Ken Clarke.
The Detainee Inquiry will produce a report for the government before being dissolved. Clarke stressed that the government was still committed to holding an independent inquiry once police complete their checks. Parliament's intelligence and security committee, which is examining MI6 links with Muammar Gaddafi's regime, has nonetheless pledged to continue its work.
Last week the Crown Prosecution Service and the Metropolitan police established a joint panel to look into evidence that the intelligence agencies were involved in the secret rendition of two Libyans back to Gaddafi's regime in 2004.
Abdel Hakim Belhadj, a commander of anti-Gaddafi forces, and Sami al-Saadi saidthey were tortured after being returned to Libya in a joint US/UK operation. These new investigations would have further delayed the start of the Gibson inquiry.
From the moment it was set up, the inquiry was beset with seemingly intractable problems. Ministers and senior intelligence officials insisted that much of it must be held in secret, while human rights groups and lawyers representing rendition and torture victims said they could never trust such an arrangement. Last summer most of the inquiry's critics announced they were boycotting it.
On Monday the foreign office minister Alistair Burt made a final, fruitless attempt to persuade the human rights groups to come back on board.
In the Commons, Clarke told MPs: "There now appears no prospect of the Gibson inquiry being able to start in the forseeable future. So following consultations with Sir Peter Gibson we have decided to bring the work of his inquiry to a conclusion."
The disbanded inquiry would "provide the government with a report on its preparatory work to date, highlighting particular themes or issues which might be the subject of further examination," he said.
"As much of this report as possible will be made public. The government fully intends to hold an independent, judge-led inquiry once all police investigations have concluded."
Clarke said Scotland Yard detectives had taken three years to decide there was insufficient evidence to bring charges in relation to claims by Guantánamo Bay detainees. It would be unreasonable to keep the Gibson inquiry panel waiting for a further unknown period. Any new inquiry "may require a fresh group of people to carry it out", he said.
Gibson said: "[We] regret the fact that we are not able to complete the task we were asked to do by the prime minister. However, we recognise that it is not practical for the inquiry to continue for an indefinite period to wait for the conclusion of the police investigations.
"We welcome the opportunity to bring together the work we have done to date. The inquiry will therefore produce a report of our work, highlighting themes which might be subject to further examination."
Human rights groups said they hoped the move would mark a rethink of the investigation process. Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, said: "We welcome the sensible decision to end the embarrassment of a so-called inquiry in which neither torture victims nor human rights campaigners had faith."
Clare Algar, executive director of Reprieve, said: "We look forward to working with the government to ensure that an inquiry with real clout and real independence is established once these investigations have concluded. This is essential to ensuring that we find out who signed off on Britain's collaboration in some of the worst excesses of the 'war on terror'."
Richard Stein, head of human rights at law firm Leigh Day & Co, who is representing the two Libyans, said: "If there is to be a future inquiry following the police investigations into my clients' allegations, then it must have credibility, allowing the official version of events to be challenged."
The Liberal Democrat MP Tom Brake called for an enhanced role for the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation to investigate the intelligence services in the interim.
The parliamentary intelligence and security committee will meet on Thursday to discuss the implications of the government's decision. It has already begun to investigate MI6 links with Gaddafi's regime, notably the part played by British intelligence officers in the rendition of the two Libyan dissidents, shortly before Tony Blair's visit to Tripoli following Gaddafi's agreement to abandon his weapons of mass destruction.
Sir Malcolm Rifkind, the committee's chairman, said: "The committee's investigation of the UK's wider intelligence relationship with the Libyans [an issue which did not fall within the scope of the detainee inquiry] will continue."
A number of MPs had also told ministers of their misgivings at the way in which the Gibson inquiry was had been convened, among them Andrew Tyrie, the Tory chair of the Treasury select committee, who has campaigning for an official investigation since 2005.
Supporters of the Gibson inquiry said that its critics failed to understand that secrecy was essential for the protection of national security and, in particular, ignored the need to maintain the primacy of the so-called control principle, which allows overseas intelligence agencies to determine the use to which its material is put once it is handed over to the UK.
Lord Carlile, the Liberal Democrat peer and former reviewer of counter-terrorism law, insisted that there had been "a blackwash of the inquiry in advance".
Critics - and there were many - said the government had failed to grasp that transparency was essential to dispel the deep-rooted suspicion that the inquiry would be a dishonest process.
All too often in the years after 9/11, they argued, official secrecy and denials, and in camera courtroom procedure, concealed evidence of serious criminal wrongdoing on the part both of MI5 and MI6, and the ministers of the last government to whom the agencies answered.
The control principle, they pointed out, would have allowed the CIA rather than the inquiry to decide whether the public should learn how that agency was treating detainees at Bagram and Guantánamo, both before and during interrogations conducted by British intelligence officers.
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