Terror suspects at risk of torture, report claims

Britain, the United States and other western countries are meeting the terror threat by sending suspects to regimes where they risk torture and abuse, it is claimed in a damning report published today.

The report says that dozens of terror suspects have been forcibly deported by Western countries to Syria, Algeria, Egypt and Uzbekistan on the basis of "flimsy" assurances that their human rights will be respected. Many of them claim they have been tortured.

The British government is singled out for criticism for adopting a policy of 'extradition at all costs' to overcome the problem of monitoring alleged terror suspects where there is insufficient evidence to try them in this country.

Human Rights Watch, authors of the 91-page report, calls on the British government to "halt immediately" all negotiations with Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco over the deportation of the former Belmarsh terror suspects still being held under control orders.

Foreign Office minister Baroness Symons visited North Africa in February to try to secure bilateral agreements for the men's deportation although the government has already acknowledged that these regimes torture terror suspects.

A spokesman for the Foreign Office said yesterday that ministers rejected the suggestion that any assurances would be unreliable.

"If they are properly handled and the assurances come from a high enough level and satisfy both this government and the UK's independent courts then they can be relied on," said the spokesman.

One of the report's key recommendations is that Britain surrender details of all other cases in which it has sought diplomatic assurances to secure deportations of terror suspects.

The United States is also criticised for adopting a practice known as "extraordinary rendition" in which suspects are sent to countries which use torture to extract confessions or other information. This intelligence is then passed on the US security services.

Officials in the US recently acknowledged the transfer of an undisclosed number of suspects to countries where torture is a serious human rights problem, claiming they received diplomatic assurances prior to he transfers. But in an increasing number of those cases so-called "renditions" the suspects have alleged that they were tortured.

Craig Murray, the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, has recently accused Britain of complicity in torture, because of the use that MI6 makes of the intelligence gathered in this way by CIA.

He said many prisoners of Uzbek origin captured by American forces were taken back to Uzbek jails where they received the most brutal tortures.

These interrogations ended up in MI6 reports that he received. "I was told by the Foreign Office's senior legal adviser there was nothing in law to prevent us obtaining and using material which had been extracted under torture provided that we had not ourselves done the torture.

"And MI6 said they found the intelligence useful. I was shattered and disillusioned."

The report, Still at Risk: Diplomatic Assurances No Safeguard against Torture, documents the growing trend among Western governments including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands of seeking assurances of humane treatment in order to transfer terrorism suspects to states with well-established records of torture. The report details a dozen cases involving actual or attempted transfers to countries where torture is commonplace.

"Governments that engage in torture always try to hide what they're doing, so their 'assurances' on torture can never be trusted," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch.

"This is a very negative trend in international diplomacy, and it's doing real damage to the global taboo against torture."

States that offer such assurances include some of the most abusive regimes in the world: Syria, Egypt and Uzbekistan. Transfers have also been effected or proposed to Yemen, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Russia, and Turkey, where certain people - for example, suspected Islamists, Chechens, or Kurds - are singled out for particularly brutal abuse.

Torture is banned under international law and there are no exceptions, even in times of war or national emergency. The ban includes the absolute prohibition on transferring people to places where they face a risk of torture.

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, the Council of Europe Commissioner on Human Rights, and the UN Independent Expert on human rights and counter-terrorism have all warned that the use of assurances is eroding the global ban on torture.

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