Gibson torture inquiry abandoned - Telegraph But there now appears no prospect of the Gibson Inquiry being able to start in the foreseeable future. So, following consultation with Sir Peter Gibson, the inquiry chair, we have decided to bring the work of this inquiry to a conclusion. He went on: "We will continue to keep Parliament fully informed of progress. The Government fully intends to hold an independent, judge-led inquiry, once all police investigations have concluded, to establish the full facts and draw a line under these issues. Mr Clarke said it would have been unfair to the inquiry team to continue keeping it on hold for an "as yet unknown period of time" while the Libyan investigations were carried out. Scotland Yard took three years looking into the cases of Guantanamo Bay detainees, he said. Mr Clarke added that any new inquiry "may require a fresh group of people to carry it out." The detainee inquiry had already been widely criticised for lacking "credibility or transparency," with human rights groups and lawyers for detainees refusing to take part. Campaigners, who are angry at the limits on the inquiry's powers and the fact that the final decision on whether material can be made public rested with the Government, also claimed the police investigation was being "hobbled" by political pressure for a "sham" inquiry. Mr Clarke added that the inquiry would "provide the Government with a report on its preparatory work to date, highlighting particular themes or issues which might be the subject of further examination." "The Government is clear that as much of this report as possible will be made public," he said. Sir Peter said: "The inquiry regrets the fact that we are not able to complete the task we were asked to do by the Prime Minister. However, we recognise that it is not practical for the inquiry to continue for an indefinite period to wait for the conclusion of the police investigations. The inquiry has, however, already done a large amount of preliminary work, including the collation of many documents from Government departments and the security and intelligence agencies. We welcome, therefore, the opportunity to bring together the work we have done to date. The inquiry will, therefore, produce a report of our work, highlighting themes which might be subject to further examination. This task now set for us remains an important one: it will ensure that the work we have done is not wasted and we hope that it will materially assist the future inquiry that the Government intends to establish. In the Commons, former justice secretary Jack Straw said Mr Clarke's decision to end the current inquiry was "absolutely right" and added that he "perhaps had no alternative." Sir Malcolm Rifkind, chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee, said the committee would consider the implications of today's announcement for its own investigation of rendition issues at its meeting tomorrow. Shami Chakrabarti, director of the civil rights group Liberty, said: "We welcome the sensible decision to end the embarrassment of a so-called inquiry in which neither torture victims nor human rights campaigners had faith. Let's remember that it was lawyers, journalists and campaigners that uncovered the Libyan rendition files now to be properly investigated by police and prosecutors. Such revelations should lead to more scrutiny of the secret state, not the shutting-down of open justice as proposed in the Government's current Green Paper. It comes after police and prosecutors said last week that allegations from two Libyan rebels, Sami al Saadi and Abdel Hakim Belhadj, that British spies were complicit in their rendition and ill-treatment in 2004 were so serious that they must be investigated immediately.