British MPs want access to redacted parts of CIA torture report

A parliamentary committee investigating possible British links to torture will request access to blacked out parts of a US Senate report on CIA treatment of Al-Qaeda suspects, its chairman said Dec. 14.
      
The news comes amid growing questions in Britain about whether its intelligence services made use of information extracted by the CIA using brutal and unauthorised tactics in the years after the 9/11 attacks.
      
Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said key figures in Britain's Labour government at the time including former prime minister Tony Blair should face questions on the issue.
      
Malcolm Rifkind, the chairman of parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee, said it would ask for access to secret parts of the US report but was not confident that the request would be successful.
      
"We are taking the steps that are normally taken to try to obtain information," he said. "There are various ways in which this might be dealt with."      

The US Senate Intelligence Committee report released last week said that CIA torture had been more brutal than previously acknowledged, badly supervised and ineffective.
      
Detainees were beaten, waterboarded and humiliated through the painful use of "rectal feeding" and "rectal rehydration," it added.
      
Defence Secretary Michael Fallon, of Prime Minister David Cameron's Conservative party, told this week's Sunday Telegraph that Blair and others should give a public account of what they knew of such activities.
      
"It's for ministers in that government to account for their actions," he added.
      
Downing Street said last week that British intelligence had spoken to counterparts in the US about removing some sections...