Reprieve: Tell us the truth about torture

Reprieve and Leigh Day & Co solicitors announced they are seeking a judicial review of the code of practice used by British intelligence services at a press conference in London.

The application states that there is "compelling evidence" demonstrating that, since at least 2002, "UK intelligence personnel have been engaged in activities amounting to complicity in torture" and that "the inevitable inference is that such activities have been in conformity with unlawful promulgated policies and guidance."

As well as the case of Binyam Mohamed, Reprieve cites that of Khaled al-Makhtari from Yemen, who was allegedly driven around Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq by British personnel and interrogated using sleep deprivation and shackling.

Another allegation involved Kenyan Salim Awadh, who claimed he was interrogated by a team of agents, including British personnel, while detained in Ethiopia in 2007.

The agents allegedly witnessed interrogators threatening to rape him, give him electric shocks and feed him with chemicals.

Last year Gordon Brown pledged to publish the most recent 2009 guidelines, a promise he has so far failed to live up to.

Partially disclosed guidance from 2002 states that agents were not required to "intervene" if they were aware of torture taking place.

This was allegedly amended in 2004 but the updated guidance has not been published.

Leigh Day & Co partner Richard Stein said: "The case is to challenge the legality of the policy that currently exists in relation to the way that British agents should relate to other states and other states' agents when they are involved in interrogating, torturing, rendering people around the world, as we know happens.

"The worrying thing about the way that circumstances are unfolding, about what's been happening over the last eight years or so, is that what's happened is British authorities have been involved in colluding with others who are involved in torture."

He added: "The torturer is inside the room torturing the person and the British agents are outside passing bits of information and questions under the door."

A Cabinet Office spokesman said the Prime Minister's "unprecedented commitment" to publish the new 2009 guidance was "the exception to the rule."

He said the new guidance would be published as soon as possible but that there was "no intention" to publish the previous guidelines.

Reprieve legal director for secret prisons and rendition Cori Crider said: "This is a massively significant issue. This is not merely about what happened in 2002-3 but it is a question of whether such illegal action is still happening today and whether the state is continuing to encourage it.

"More and more cases keep emerging. While we continue to hear of cases where it would appear British intelligence services were uncomfortably close to being involved in torture, it remains a clear issue."