MI5 considered CIA's rendition flights 'lawful': Report

British spy agency MI5 considered rendition flights by its American counterpart CIA "lawful" and "proper", according to a senior intelligence official.

Britain's The Daily Mail claims to have obtained the disclosure in legal statements made by a senior manager in MI5 international terrorism division, after it approached the High Court in the wake of a case of terror suspect Binyam Mohamed.

30-year-old Mohamed, an Ethiopian, lived in London for seven years before travelling to Afghanistan in 2001. He was arrested in Pakistan a year later, and handed over to the CIA before being released recently following orders of a US court.

According to the British newspaper, evidence that the decision to co-operate with US's extraordinary renditions was actually taken at a high level is contained in a statement by the MI5 officer known as "Witness A".
 
"The transfer of detainees by the US authorities to detention facilities in Afghanistan was not unusual and was not regarded as unlawful or improper. It does not appear from the records, I have seen that the Security Service objected,"
the statement reads.

In fact, according to Witness A, MI5 was not told of Mohamed whereabouts but continued to supply his interrogators with questions because "it was considered essential in the interests of national security to try to obtain answers to certain questions, in particular about a strand of reporting suggesting current plans for an attack in the UK".
 
MI5 did not, the statement reads, attempt to assess if anything Mohamed said was "the product of torture". The newly disclosed documents also include a record of an interrogation of Mohamed in Pakistan, made by another MI5 man, "Witness B".

The typed note, sent to MI5 headquarters after "Witness B" interviewed Mohamed in a Pakistan prison in May 2002, reveals for the first time why the MI5 was so interested in him, the newspaper said.
 
MI5 believed Mohamed had crucial evidence about the activities of alleged terror mastermind Abu Qatada, Osama bin Laden's "Ambassador" to Europe as well as London-based network supplying al-Qaeda with recruits from a mosque in West London.