The British government is implicated in torture

Foreign secretary David Miliband has welcomed Barack Obama’s decision to close Guantanamo Bay.

The closure of Guantanamo is a chance to stamp out the barbaric practices that characterised the administration of George Bush. But seizing this chance will require some honest accounting on the part of the British government.

Miliband is still refusing to disclose the documents that would reveal the full extent of British involvement in “extraordinary rendition” and the interrogation of terror suspects.

He refuses to say how far the Labour government cooperated with the CIA’s use of torture and its network of secret prisons.

The high court has already ruled that a British MI5 officer participated in the unlawful interrogation of Guantanamo prisoner Binyam Mohamed in Pakistan in 2002.

We should grab this opportunity to increase the pressure on the government to come clean on its role in – and to break with the practices of – the “war on terror”.