THE UK Government has refused to comment on allegations MI5 and MI6 supplied information that led to the abduction and alleged torture of Scottish Sikh Jagtar Singh Johal.
Lawyers for Jagtar Singh Johal, from Dumbarton, have lodged a complaint after human rights group Reprieve identified his case among anonymised details published in the annual report by the UK’s investigatory powers commissioner.
Johal, 35, was in Punjab in northern India for his wedding in 2017 when his family say he was arrested and bundled into an unmarked car. He has been in jail awaiting trial ever since.
Foreign Office Minister Rehman Chishti, replying to an urgent question in the Commons from Johal's MP Martin Docherty-Hughes, said: “The first priority of the Government is the welfare of Mr Johal.
“With regards to any civil litigation, with regards to concerns on the intelligence agencies, I cannot and will not comment in this House on that.
“We must let the legal process take its course and I will therefore not comment on this matter in line with long-established practice.”
Johal had another pre-trial hearing called off on Wednesday but handed a letter to his lawyer for new Prime Minister Liz Truss asking her to work to secure his release and have "more guts" than her predecessors.
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Docherty-Hughes earlier said: “My constituent has now had his 188th pre-trial hearing suspended today because the courts in India couldn’t make their mind up.
“Lawyers representing my constituent submitted a motion at the Royal Courts of Justice seeking redress after compelling evidence emerged linking the United Kingdom Government directly to his arrest and torture almost five years ago."
Docherty-Hughes said the information has “posed a multitude of hard questions” for the UK Government and new Prime Minister Truss given she was formerly foreign secretary.
He said: “Like hundreds of thousands of UK citizens of Sikh ethnicity, the Singh Johal family travel to India every year yet now they must wonder if it’s safe for them to continue to do so.”
Docherty-Hughes suggested the difficulties experienced by Johal have been “caused directly, at least for me, by the intervention of the state which is meant to protect him”.
Labour shadow Foreign Office minister Catherine West also called on the Government to put some “backbone” in the negotiations with India.
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She said: “The allegations in recent weeks of the potential collusion of the British intelligence service in the arbitrary detention of Mr Johal are deeply worrying. It’s vitally important that the veracity of these claims be investigated as soon as possible to find the truth.
"The House will expect the minister to be clear on whether the former prime minister [Boris Johnson], under whose watch this occurred, we believe, authorised sharing this intelligence with the Indian government when he was the foreign secretary.”
Chishti, responding to Labour’s question of any involvement by Johnson, said: “I think it’s absolutely important when such an accusation is made that it is fully, thoroughly investigated and looked at. And that will be done by the High Court.”
Conservative former minister David Davis called on the Government to review its attitude to torture and its complicity in the practice.
He said: “The allegation is that the British government was complicit in the provision of information to the Indian government, knowing that it might be used for torture and in a capital case.
“The point here is that this is not the first time this has happened. On numerous occasions this has happened.
"This isn’t only one civil case looking at this, there’s another one in the name (Labour MP Dan Jarvis) demanding that the Government reviews, as was promised, its attitude to torture and its complicity and involvement with it.”
He asked the minister to commit that “we will now have that review, covering the Johal case and all the others that went before it, and promising to this House we will never again be complicit in the torture of any British citizen”.
Chishti said: “There are allegations in this case … and there is a procedure and process that those allegations have to go through to be looked at, and they are going through the High Court at this point in time.”
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