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Damning report highlights UK’s role in torture Issue: 28
July 2010
France, Germany, and the United Kingdom use foreign intelligence obtained under torture in the fight against terrorism, Human Rights Watch said in a damning report released this week. The 62-page report, “No Questions Asked: Intelligence Cooperation with Countries that Torture,” analyzes the ongoing cooperation by the governments of France, Germany, and the United Kingdom with foreign intelligence services in countries that routinely use torture. The three governments use the resulting foreign torture information for intelligence and policing purposes. Torture is prohibited under international law, with no exceptions allowed. “Berlin, Paris, and London should be working to eradicate torture, not relying on foreign torture intelligence,” said Judith Sunderland, senior Western Europe researcher
at Human Rights Watch. “Taking information from torturers is illegal and just plain wrong.” The intelligence services in France, Germany, and the UK do not have detailed instructions on how to assess and follow-up on information coming from countries that torture, Parliamentary oversight in each country is also inadequate. Intelligence services in all three countries claim it is impossible to know the sources and methods used to acquire shared information. But officials in the UK and Germany have made public statements indicating that they believe it is sometimes acceptable to use foreign intelligence even if it is obtained under torture. Such statements send the wrong message to abusive governments, Human Rights Watch said. “The rules meant to exclude torture from the courts don’t work,” Sunderland said. “It should be up to prosecutors to prove that evidence
originating in countries that torture wasn’t obtained through abuse.” The use of torture intelligence in the fight against terrorism by France, Germany, and the UK damages the credibility of the European Union, the actual practices of these leading EU states contradict the EU’s anti-torture guidelines, which make eradicating torture and ill-treatment a priority in its relations with other countries. Over the long-term, abuses in the name of countering terrorism also feed the grievances that fuel radicalization and recruitment to terrorism, Human Rights Watch said. “Europe has been forced to confront its complicity in US counterterrorism abuses,” Sunderland said. “It is time for France, Germany, and the UK to take responsibility for their own role in third-party abuse, and to ensure that their intelligence cooperation isn’t perpetuating abuse.” passionislam.com