UK handed terror suspects to US for interrogation

London: Ministers were expected to admit last night that Britain was involved in handing over terror suspects in Iraq to the US to fly to Afghanistan for interrogation.

Defence Secretary John Hutton was due to tell MPs of the two cases which are set to spark a huge new row over "extraordinary rendition".

Ministers had previously denied that Britain has been involved in secretly sending terror suspects to countries where torture and other abuses are still widely believed to be used on detainees.

The admissions are thought to seriously undermine the government's position. The Ministry of Defence refused to comment on the cases.

However, it is thought that there was some "mix-up" between British and American forces over who was detaining the two suspects, who were regarded as hardline Al Qaida terrorists.

US troops are said to have thought they were in their custody and then flew them to Afghanistan. The men, believed to be Pakistanis, are said to have been interviewed in their own language.

Andrew Dismore, chairman of Parliament's joint committee on human rights, stressed he wanted to hear the details of Hutton's statement before commenting fully. However, he added: "If these claims are true, this opens another dimension in our involvement in the war on terror."

However, he stressed: "There is a difference between doing something unwittingly and doing something with the full knowledge of what may happen to the individuals concerned."

Britain's security agencies will now face accusations that suspects were tortured in Pakistan with their full knowledge. Binyam Mohammad, who was flown back to Britain on Monday after more than four years in Guantanamo Bay, claims he was "tortured in medieval ways" and that British officials knew.

Shadow Defence Secretary Liam Fox, who is in Islamabad meeting Pakistan's prime minister and other ministers, said: "It's essential that we get full disclosure from the government because we need to know exactly what happened and when not least because the government has previously denied being part of extraordinary rendition."

Foreign Secretary David Miliband was forced to admit last year that two so-called "torture flights" were allowed to use British sovereign territory.