British police to probe Libya rendition claims

British police will probe claims the country's secret services were involved in the rendition and ill-treatment of two opponents of former Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi's regime, authorities said Thursday.

The allegations concerning Abdelhakim Belhaj, now Tripoli's military commander, and another man were "so serious" they warranted a criminal investigation and could not wait for a government-ordered inquiry, Scotland Yard said.

"I trust the police will get to the bottom of this, and find not just the rank-and-file agents, but those ministers who were truly responsible," Belhaj said after the announcement.

The news came as prosecutors said they would not be bringing charges against British agents in two other cases where they were allegedly complicit in torture, including that of former Guantanamo Bay detainee Binyam Mohamed.

The head of foreign spy agency MI6 welcomed the decision and said it would cooperate fully with the new police investigation, which will look at the treatment of Belhaj and another opponent of the Kadhafi regime, Sami al Saadi.

"It is in the service's interest to deal with the allegations being made as swiftly as possible so we can draw a line under them and focus on the crucial work we face now and in the future," MI6 chief John Sawers said.

Britain says it does not condone torture but in 2010, Prime Minister David Cameron ordered an inquiry into a string of allegations that its agents had been involved in the ill-treatment of terror suspects overseas after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

The so-called Gibson Inquiry will look at claims made by former Guantanamo detainees and those concerning Libya, but it has yet to start work.

Scotland Yard said in a statement that the allegations made by the Libyans "are so serious that it is in the public interest for them to be investigated now rather than at the conclusion of the detainee inquiry".

Files unearthed from Kadhafi's archives after he was ousted said Belhaj was captured by the CIA in Bangkok in 2004 and with British help was forcibly returned to Libya, where he was jailed in the notorious Abu Salim prison.

Saadi meanwhile claims British agents helped detain him in Hong Kong in 2004 and return him to Libya, where he was subjected to years of torture.

Clive Stafford Smith, the director of legal charity Reprieve, welcomed the new police investigation, saying he had little faith in the official inquiry.

The police decision "shows that evidence of British complicity in the torture of Libyans Sami al Saadi and Abdulhakim Belhaj by the Kadhafi regime is so blatant that a criminal inquiry must go ahead before the government's deeply flawed Gibson Inquiry can get started", he said.

Prosecutors also announced they would not be bringing charges against any British agents in the case of Binyam Mohamed, an Ethiopian-born British resident who was arrested in Pakistan in 2002 by US authorities.

Mohamed claims he was taken on a secret flight to Morocco by the CIA and subjected to appalling treatment for 18 months, before being transferred to Afghanistan and finally to the US detention camp at Guantanamo Bay in 2004.

A Scotland Yard investigation found that British agents interviewed Mohamed in Pakistan, gave the US authorities information about him and supplied questions to be put to him while he was held in Morocco.

But prosecutors said there was "insufficient evidence" to prove the agents did this while they knew or should have known that he was at risk of torture.

They added: "Nothing in this decision should be read as concluding that the ill-treatment alleged by Mr Mohamed did not take place, or that it was lawful."

Police also found insufficient evidence to prove that an MI6 agent was involved in wrongdoing when he interviewed a terror suspect held by the US authorities at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan in 2002.