Human rights groups have been calling for an inquiry into allegations of illegal detention and torture of British terror suspects in Pakistan. Human Rights Watch is calling on the British government to close down the legal loopholes which appear to give MI5 officers immunity from prosecution if they collude in the torture of British terror suspects. This comes after allegations that suspects have been illegally detained in Pakistan and subjected to severe mistreatment before being questioned by MI5.

Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights has opened a series of hearings to examine the evidence, first reported in the Guardian newspaper in 2008. The Committee has decided to ask the Home Secretary Jacqui Smith to answer questions about the claims.

Several British nationals who were detained without trial by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) have also been questioned by MI5 while in captivity. The ISI is an agency notorious for its routine use of severe torture, including beatings, whippings, and sleep deprivation, being suspended from the ceiling, being threatened with an electric drill and the removal of fingernails with pliers.

Accounts given by a number of the detainees suggest that they may have been tortured in the same room at an ISI facility in central Rawalpindi, and that the British officers may use a similar form of words when addressing them for the first time. In one instance, a British court heard that MI5 and Greater Manchester police passed questions to the ISI to be put to the detainee – an act that his lawyers argue is evidence that they condoned his torture.

One man, currently working as a doctor in southern England, was held for two months in a building opposite the offices of the British Deputy High Commission in Karachi. He says he was tortured while being questioned about the July 2005 terrorist attacks on London’s transport network. Towards the end of his detention, he says, he was questioned by two British intelligence officers. He was released without charge, but appears to remain deeply traumatised.