British officials accused over abuse

British troops, diplomats and secret agents were all complicit in prisoner abuse by US troops in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, a new report claims today.

Three Britons held in the American base on Cuba for two years without charge said guards forced detainees to engage in sex acts and then showed videotapes of the abuse to extract confessions from other inmates.

In what the men's lawyers claim was a dry run for interrogation techniques used in Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, inmates in Guantanamo were allegedly beaten, hooded and stripped naked as "trophy" photos were taken by their captors.

But SAS troops and MI5 officers also took part in interrogations and Foreign Office officials failed to act on the prisoners' complaints of illtreatment, the 115-page dossier claims.

The Government today promised to investigate some of the claims, including an allegation-that an SAS soldier conducted an interrogation while an American colleague pointed a gun at the head of one of the Britons.

Rhuhel Ahmed said the incident occurred as the SAS officer told him he could go home to the UK if he admitted he had been in Afghanistan to fight a holy war. The Ministry of Defence said it would probe the claims.

"The British Army follows the rules of the Geneva Convention," said a spokesman. "It is not permissible to point guns at people's heads during interrogation. We would investigate if any allegation of that nature is made." The claims are in a dossier published today by lawyers for Mr Ahmed and two other Britons, Asif Iqbal and Shafiq Rasul.

The men, known as the " Tipton Three" after the West Midlands town where they were brought up, alleged that British officials allowed the US guards to "soften up" prisoners before questioning. They challenge a recent claim by Foreign Office minister Chris Mullin that no Briton had complained of systematic abuse while in Guantanamo.