[Al Arabiya Latest] A London-based legal charity is suing the British government over the rendition of terror suspects from Iraq to Afghanistan, it said Monday.Reprieve wants to force ministers to identify two men who were arrested by British forces in Iraq in 2004 before being handed over to the United States and taken to Bagram air base in Afghanistan.
This would allow Reprieve to try and secure a court hearing on their behalf to determine whether or not their detention is legal.
The charity says it believes the two men may be Pakistanis named Salah el Din from Baluchistan and Saifullah from Punjab, but this information is not enough to identify them fully or track down their families.
The charity's solicitors, Leigh Day and Co, said in a letter to Defense Secretary Bob Ainsworth that the pair "may well have been tortured or subjected to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment."
Britain admitted in February it had captured the pair in Iraq and handed them over to U.S. agents, who transferred them to Afghanistan for interrogation.
U.S. custody
Then defense secretary John Hutton told the House of Commons the men were members of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistan-based militant group blamed by India for last year's terror attacks on Mumbai which killed over 165 people.
"Imagine, if you will, that a criminal was to apologize for taking part in a kidnap, but then refuse to name his victims, or to help secure their freedom -- we would hardly accept the apology as being sincere," Reprieve's director Clive Stafford Smith said.
He added there was an "urgent moral, as well as legal, duty to repair the damage," which he said had been caused.
The Ministry of Defense said it was considering the case, adding: "These individuals are in the custody of the U.S. government."
"We have no reason to believe that Reprieve's unsubstantiated allegations about their welfare are accurate."
"The U.S. has assured us the detainees are held in a humane, safe and secure environment within the detention facility, which meets international standards for the care and custody of detained persons."