Senior former cops have been accused of training Chinese police who could serve in the country’s Xinjiang province where Uyghurs are persecuted.
And it is claimed they only stopped when they were about to be exposed in a shock report by campaign group Freedom from Torture – which also revealed £71,000 of British aid money was going into the project.
London Policing College had a five-year contract, running until 2023, to train cadets from Chinese police academies in counter-terrorism using the UK’s Prevent strategy.
The private firm is headed up by ex-Met Deputy Assistant Commissioner Rod Jarman.
Former Chief Superintendent Parm Sandhu and counter terror specialist Kyle Hardcastle are also on the team.
The FFT report said: “British-trained police in any part of China are at risk of participating in the perpetration of systematic torture and repression of minorities in Xinjiang.
"The police have been at the forefront of a horrifying campaign of violence and repression carried out under the guise of counter-terrorism.”
Abuses against Uyghurs and Muslims in Xinjiang include torture, forced labour, forced sterilisation and mass internment.
The Government has described the oppression as “horrific abuses on an industrial scale” and in January 2021, the Foreign Office set guidelines to ensure UK firms did not profit from human rights violations there.
But the FFT’s Roslyn Rennie claimed: “LPC kept the project going until we told them in April we were publishing our report – more than a year after the guidance to stop.”
Foreign Office minister Anne-Marie Trevelyan last week said the project was part of efforts “to reduce human rights violations... through better policing”.
She added: “The LPC have now ceased all programmes in China.”
The British Council, which delivers UK aid, said: “The aim of this collaboration project was to improve international teaching standards in police education.”
Neither the LPC nor Mr Jarman responded to requests for a comment.
