“Those redacted bits in the Senate Intelligence Committee report on the use of torture on terror suspects weren’t just to try and cover up UK involvement, but to hide just how embarrassing our contribution was,” former Security Service officer Dan Shagler has told The Sleaze. “The fact is that both the Blair and Cameron governments couldn’t wait to get involved, in order to curry favour with the US – but to try and keep their hands clean politically, they ‘outsourced’ the torture.” In a series of sensational revelations, the former MI5 man – currently living in Moscow in an attempt to avoid extradition over his whistle-blowing – has revealed how torture was secretly put out to tender by successive governments. “The trouble was that nobody in the UK actually had any experience in this sort of thing,” Shagler claimed. “Of course, the Metropolitan Police put a bid in based on their history of suspects ‘falling down the stairs’ at police stations, but they couldn’t quite grasp the idea that we wanted them to torture information out of suspects, not beat them into signing a pre-written statement to fit them up for various unsolved terrorist attacks.” Consequently, the Security Service – the government department charged with arranging the contracts – was forced to take an unorthodox approach to outsourcing torture.

“It turned out that the only people geared up for inflicting the sort of physical abuse we were looking for were in the sex industry,” Shagler explained. “After a lot of first-hand research by some of our most senior people, a number of S&M dungeons and dominatrices were selected to be allowed to tender for the torture work.” According to the ex-spook, MI5 chiefs saw several advantages in outsourcing torture to the sex trade: they were experienced in keeping confidential the details of clients and they could supply all of their own equipment. “It was all a bit old school – whips, racks, dripping wax and that sort of thing – nothing like as sophisticated as all that electronic stuff the CIA likes to wire people up with, but the prevailing opinion was that a back-to-basics approach could be just as effective,” Shagler recalls. “Initially, it was decided to run a pilot scheme, with the chosen dominatrices and dungeons tendering to ‘interrogate’ suspects on an individual basis, just to check the viability of the scheme before letting bigger and longer contracts.” Shagler himself witnessed one of these early interrogations. “I was there purely as an observer, obviously,” he points out. “This Arab-looking type – apparently he was a UK citizen – was secretly shipped in from Guantanamo Bay, where he was being held by the Yanks, and sent to this S&M dungeon in Camberwell.”

From the outset, it was clear to Shagler that the interrogation wasn’t proceeding quite as had been envisaged by the Security Service. “They had the fellow strapped to this table, stark naked, whilst some leather clad woman thrashed his balls with this little whip,” he recollected. “It wasn’t so much that it wasn’t having an effect on him, than he actually seemed to be enjoying it – the bastard was laughing between wincing with pain and shouting from more!” The opening gambit having failed to extract any useful information from the prisoner, the dungeon’s operatives decided to try another tack. “This time they had him tied across a desk while the leather woman gave his backside a good caning – at the same time a bloke in a gimp mask poured hot wax all over his back,” Shagler old The Sleaze. “The bastard just shrieked – a combination of pain and pleasure! He started shouting about how he couldn’t believe his luck as he used to pay good money for this sort of thing!” Further attempts at interrogation included the use of nipple clamps, suspension, various forms of rope bondage and enemas – all of which the prisoner enjoyed. “They finally tired tying his cock and balls up, with a bucket suspended from the end of the rope – they slowly filled the bucket with water so as to stretch his penis and constrict his scrotum. He loved it,” says Shagler. “It was the same story from the other pilot interrogations. Embarrassingly, word had obviously got back to Guantanamo – inmates were lining up to volunteer to undergo extraordinary rendition to London.”

Reeling with embarrassment, the UK government decided that a rethink in their torture outsourcing was needed. “It was clear that these amateurs just couldn’t do the job – we needed professional outsourcing companies, used to handling sensitive government contracts,” Shagler told us. “But the trouble was that the likes of G4S and Serco just didn’t have the expertise – when they first took on the contracts, most of the ‘torturers’ they’d recruited didn’t turn up for the booked sessions. They’d just been taking people off of the dole queue on zero hours contracts – more often than not, when a torturing gig finally came up, they’d already found better paying work, like working at Burger King. They tried plugging the gap with Workfare referrals, but that proved just as useless.” It was clear that, if they were to fulfil their contracts and the UK’s torture obligations, the outsourcing companies would require some kind of assistance from the government.

“It was quickly decided that the use of service or police personnel on loan would be unacceptable – the whole point of the exercise was to keep the government at arm’s length from the actual torturing,” explained the former intelligence officer. “So the controversial decision was made to allow the outsourcing companies to recruit foreign torturers and bring them into the UK.” Former Soviet Bloc countries and the former Yugoslavia proved to be rich recruiting grounds for such workers. “There are just so many former secret police and paramilitary types with the relevant skills looking for work in those places – their main alternative would be to work for organised crime. Whilst that paid more than our companies could, it was a risky business. Our boys could offer them legitimate work, free to use their skills to the limit without fear of arrest and prosecution,” Shagler claimed. “The only problem was that most of them were wanted war criminals or had convictions for violent crimes, sometimes even murder, making it impossible, under normal circumstances, for them to get visas or even enter the UK legally.” Consequently, he alleged, the government made the decision to slacken the background checks on such immigrants. “Of course, it’s rather backfired now, with all these newspaper reports about convicted Lithuanian murderers and the like being allowed to enter the country and commit violent crimes,” he opined. “That was the problem – psychopaths like that could never be satisfied with a bit of state sanctioned torture: they just can’t help but indulge in some freelance violence on the side.” The government has subsequently denied all of Shagler’s allegations, labelling him a ‘fantasist’ who was dismissed from the Security Service after being found chained naked to a bed when police raided a notorious Belgravia brothel.