Irfan Siddiq has lost his way.

Abu Bakr, the original Siddiq and companion of Mohammed was The believer, the Most Trustful, The One Who Never Lies.

Our present Irfan Siddiq of the Foreign Office seem to be none of the above.

He wrote to Grace Cassy of Downing Street:



Extraordinary rendition "is almost certainly illegal", and if Britain co-operated with an illegal act of this kind, "such an act would also be illegal".

"We now cannot say that we have received no such requests for the use of UK territory or air space for 'Extraordinary Rendition'.

"We should try to avoid grassing ourselves up" the memo says, and "try to move the debate on . . . underlining all the time the strong counter-terrorist rationale for close co-operation with the US".

When Rice used the word "torture", the memo makes clear, she has in mind a particular Texan definition of the term which did not include cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.

In fact, last January, Alberto Gonzales, the attorney-general, claimed in Senate testimony the power to use cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment as long as the prisoner was not an American and was held outside the US, the report said.

"Other governments obviously subject detainees to such treatment or worse, but they do so clandestinely," the report said.

"The Bush administration is the only government in the world known to claim this power openly, as a matter of official policy, and to pretend that it is lawful."