London - The use of torture by the US at the prison camp of Guantanamo Bay has served as a "recruiting sergeant" for suicide terrorists, a former British intelligence chief alleged Tuesday.

Stella Rimington, who stood down as head of Britain's MI5 intelligence service in 1996, accused the British government of having used anti-terrorism laws to restrict civil liberties by creating a "climate of fear."

Rimington, a harsh critic of the US and British government's responses to the terrorist threat, said: "The US has gone too far with Guantanamo and the tortures. MI5 does not do that."

Furthermore, she said in an interview published in the Daily Telegraph, the policies had been counter-productive: "There are more and more suicide terrorists finding greater justification."

Her remarks came a day after the publication of a study by the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) which said that many states had fallen "into a trap set by terrorists" by introducing measures which undermined the values they sought to protect.

The report condemned the use of "notorious" counter-terrorism tactics such as torture, disappearances, arbitrary and secret detention.

Former Irish president Mary Robinson, the president of the ICJ, said it was "time to take stock and to repeal abusive laws and policies enacted in recent years."

"Human rights and international humanitarian law provide a strong and flexible framework to address terrorist threats," she said. (dpa)