British spy agencies are under growing pressure to reveal how closely they worked with their US counterparts following 9/11 after a damning US Senate report exposed how the CIA tortured terror suspects.
The revelations, published on Tuesday, have dragged Britain’s domestic spy agency MI5 and its foreign intelligence counterpart MI6 back into the spotlight and led to calls for a full judge-led inquiry.
Britain was Washington’s closest partner in the “War on Terror” and questions about British involvement in abuses have rankled for years, along with doubts about the close alignment with US foreign policy. Tom Davies from Amnesty International said Britain seemed “afraid to turn over the rock for fear of what it will find underneath.”
The British-based rights group has launched an online petition calling for the opening of a criminal investigation that had received nearly 14,000 signatures by Friday. Britain’s press has also been unusually united in demanding that the public know what the security services did on their behalf.