LONDON, Feb 26: After a year of allegations and repeated ministerial assurances to the contrary, the government has admitted that British troops in Iraq handed over terror suspects believed to be Pakistanis and members of the banned Lashkar-e-Taiba to the US, which then secretly rendered them to a prison in Afghanistan.

The admission was made in the Commons by Defence Secretary John Hutton, who apologised to MPs for inaccurate information ministers had previously given them.

He said British soldiers, believed to have been SAS troops, handed over two suspected terrorists to the US in Iraq in February 2004. The men had been captured outside the UK-controlled zone covering south-eastern Iraq.

Mr Hutton said the pair, believed to be Pakistanis, were still being held in Afghanistan. He said they were members of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a banned organisation that he said was linked to Al Qaeda.

The US had assured him the men were being held in humane conditions and had access to the Red Cross, Mr Hutton said.

The admission is hugely embarrassing to the government, coming in the wake of the continuing dispute over the suppression of evidence of UK collusion in the alleged torture of former British residents, including Binyam Mohamed, who was released last week after more than four years in Guantánamo Bay.

Mr Hutton said the allegations first came to light in February last year. It was the same time that Ben Griffin, a former SAS soldier, revealed that Iraqis and Afghans were captured by British and American special forces and rendered to prisons where they faced torture. The Ministry of Defence at the time had said it did not comment on the activities of special forces.

The government subsequently obtained a gagging order in the courts preventing Mr Griffin from saying more.

Mr Hutton revealed that officials knew about the transfer of the two prisoners in 2004, and references had been made in “lengthy papers” sent in April 2006 to Jack Straw and John Reid, the then foreign and home secretaries.

“It is clear that the context provided did not highlight its significance at that point to the ministers concerned,” Mr Hutton said.

Foreign Secretary David Miliband was forced last year to admit after earlier government denials that two CIA aircraft transporting abducted prisoners had landed on UK territory in 2002. The planes refuelled on the British dependent territory of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.