UK's rendition cover-up

The government is refusing to provide details of the torture and wrongful detention of a man rendered through British territory, it was claimed today, depriving him of a remedy for "serious civil and criminal wrongdoing".

Mohammed Madni, who was arrested in Jakarta, Indonesia in 2002, is thought to be one of the two men the foreign secretary, David Miliband, admitted last year were rendered through the British Indian Ocean island Diego Garcia.

Milliband was forced to admit that the rendition, by the US, had used British territory, but has resisted calls that the identity of the men should be revealed and an apology issued.

"I defy the British government to deny that Madni was the person taken through Diego Garcia," said Clive Stafford Smith, founder of the charity Reprieve, which represents Madni. "Until the government admits this, it can't be said with absolutely proof. But the question for the British government is why not? Why not admit to the victim that you did it?"

He said detailed research and "a process of elimination" showed that Madni was one of the individuals rendered through Diego Garcia in 2002.

Speaking today by phone from Pakistan, Madni said he had been arrested in Jakarta for being "in the wrong place at the wrong time" – a fact borne out, his lawyers say, by his eventual release without charge after six years in detention at Guantánamo Bay. More