Human Rights Watch released a 45-page report on 2 November detailing the UK’s manoeuvres around bans on torture. The US-based international human rights organisation said that Britain is supporting torture policies, while at the same time continuing its long-time support of anti-torture agreements. According to the report, the government has sought to reinterpret laws which ban court evidence gained from torture, has tried to deport detainees to countries that are known to torture, and has provided information that has led to the torture of suspects. Human rights advocates have spoken out against these recent actions, stressing the importance of retaining the basic principles of human decency.  Daniel Steilen reports for Index on Censorship

-The rules of the game are changing
The difficulties of fighting terrorism have led the government to more effective ways of gaining information, some of which challenge what are seen as universal values. Prime Minister Tony Blair said, “the rules of the game are changing.” However, human rights groups believe that the legal situation is clear, that any use of torture is a violation of a person’s fundamental rights, under whatever circumstances. The 1996 case Chahal v. UK reconfirmed this right, to the displeasure of some of those in the Blair government. In the view of Home Secretary John Reid, the ruling is a misguided restraint put on British security “They just don´t get it,” he said. The UK is trying to persuade other governments to put aside that ruling, and has already gained the approval of Lithuania, Slovakia and Portugal.

Weakening the ban on torture
There has also been a push by the Blair government to permit court evidence gained through torture. An appeals court in 2004 ruled that such evidence was permissible as long as the government had “neither procured nor connived at” the torture. The House of Lords judicial committee overturned the ruling in 2005, however. “The principles of the common law, standing alone, in my opinion compel the exclusion of third party torture evidence as unreliable, unfair, offensive to ordinary standards of humanity and decency and incompatible with the principles which should animate a tribunal seeking to administer justice,” said Lord Bingham.

A case which demonstrates this ambivalence toward torture is the case of Binyam Mohamed al-Habashi, who had been seeking asylum in the UK but left and was arrested in Pakistan in 2002, and later transferred to Morocco and Afghanistan. During his detention in the military and secret prisons of these three countries, he alleges that he was tortured. Currently, he is being held by the United States at Guantanamo Bay. It is clear from the interrogators questioning that the UK had provided information contributing to his detention.

Yet while the government has put tremendous effort into trying to change and evade torture laws, it has done nothing to repeal less contentious laws forbidding the use of evidence gained from phone taps and other forms of intercept in court. The Human Rights Watch report suggests that the government could increase their ability to prosecute terrorists by changing these laws, and at the same time retaining the approval of human rights organisations. Ireland is the only other western country with such an overriding ban. Many in Parliament, as well as Metropolitan Police commissioner Sir Ian Blair, have advocated lifting the ban, but to no avail.

Deporting to countries that torture
Human Rights Watch accuses the UK government of approving of the deportation of detainees to countries which are known to practice torture. Suspicions have been raised that deportation could be used in order to get information obtained under torture. International laws, agreed upon by the UK and other countries at the UN Convention against Torture and the European Convention on Human Rights, forbid deportation when there is a risk of torture. To try to get around this, the British government has adopted the use of “diplomatic assurances,” where the receiving country agrees not to torture the deportee. However, these countries—which include Jordan, Lebanon and Libya—have agreed in theory to international anti-torture laws but have repeatedly violated these laws. Sweden deported Ahmed Agiza and Mohammed al-Zari in 2001 to Egypt after receiving assurances that proved not to hold. Human Rights Watch alleges that the British government is well aware that these agreements are not likely to hold and in 1999 tried to deport Hani Yousssef back to Egypt, but were advised not to by the Home Office and Foreign Office.

-With torture there is no middle ground
Yet the UK officially remains opposed to torture. “Torture is one of the worst human rights abuses. As torture is outlawed under general international law as well as specific human rights treaties, when governments condone it, they risk losing their legitimacy and provoking terrorism,” stated the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office Human Rights Report 2005. Others have stressed the importance of upholding these core values even when facing the dangers of terrorism. Ursula Owen, editor-in-chief of Index on Censorship, said “with torture there is no middle ground. Accepting its official use, perhaps more than anything else, must surely lead us to ask whether such a change of attitude to human rights and civil liberties constitutes a kind of defeat for us—and a victory for the terrorists” (see Index on Censorship 1/2005).

Background information-UK policy