Tuesday, August 4, 2009

JURIST - Paper Chase: UK lawmakers urge inquiry into alleged torture complicity

UK lawmakers urge inquiry into alleged torture complicity
August 4, 2009 - Christian Ehret at 2:35 PM ET

The UK Parliament Joint Committee on Human Rights [official website] released a report [text] Tuesday calling for an independent inquiry into allegations regarding government complicity in the torture of UK terrorism suspects in Pakistan and elsewhere. Maintaining that complicity in torture is a violation of international human rights obligations, the committee examined how complicity can be defined and reported a large number of "credible allegations" of such conduct. Examples set forth include asking foreign intelligence services known to use torture to question an individual, providing such agencies with information or questions regarding an individual, and systematically receiving information known or thought likely to have been obtained through torture. Additionally, the report states that the UK is complicit if they merely should have known that torture was taking place.

ARTICLE HERE