The practice of "extraordinary rendition" was today again in the spotlight with claims that the detainee who supplied the Bush administration's pre-war claims linking al-Qaida to Iraq was in Egyptian custody.
Unnamed US government officials, quoted in the New York Times, said Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, a Libyan, made his most specific claims after the US handed him over to interrogators from a third country.
Claims from the officials that Al-Libi later admitted to inventing the allegations in order to avoid harsh treatment backed up earlier suggestions from Colin Powell's chief of staff at the time of the war that al-Libi was possibly tortured.
