British Parliament Report (March 2005)

It has been reported that, in at least four cases of prisoners being held at Guantánamo, British intelligence agency MI5 raised concerns over allegations of mistreatment, lodging complaints to the FBI and CIA (click here). Moreover, in March 2005, the Intelligence and Security Committee of the British Parliament issued a Report on the Handling of Detainees by UK Intelligence Personnel in Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay and Iraq. This report claimed that a number of  instances of legal and psychological abuse took place at Guantánamo, and that these abuses were acknowledged by U.S. authorities. CSHRA includes the testimony in the March 2005 report below.

BPR1. In February 2004, the Security Service made their last visit to Guantanamo Bay. The officers, who had conducted interviews of detainees that month, reported that some of the detainees were depressed and withdrawn and that their mental condition was deteriorating. One had complained about being held in solitary confinement for over a year, not seeing daylight for four months, being denied reading material and restriction of mail […] On 15 March [2004], Sir Nigel Sheinwald [then the Prime Minister's Foreign Policy Adviser] raised the February complaints with both Condoleezza Rice (the then US National Security Adviser) and Paul Wolfowitz (the US Deputy Secretary of Defense), and in May 2004 the complaints were again raised by the Foreign Secretary with Colin Powell. Later, at an official level, the US authorities acknowledged the accuracy of some of the concerns and stated that improvements had been made (Intelligence and Security Committee 2005, §§ 67,70).

BPR2. […] The UK Government officially asked the US authorities in May 2004 if interrogation techniques such as hooding, sleep and food deprivation had been used in Guantanamo Bay and Iraq. […] In June 2004, the US administration confirmed that such techniques had been authorised for a limited period – in Guantanamo Bay between November 2002 and January 2003, and in Iraq until May 2004. The US has confirmed that these techniques were not applied to UK nationals (Intelligence and Security Committee 2005, §101).