Extra Extra

Craig Murray has a blog. (This is the former UK Ambassador who lost his job for standing by his principles in openly criticising the Uzbek regime for boiling people alive, amongst other things. This was inconvenient, given Uzbekistan’s billing as ‘a key ally in the War On Terror’. He lost his job, ran against Foreign Secretary Jack Straw in the last UK election, and has continued to ask awkward but very reasonable, cogent and informed questions about the CIA’s penchant for sending terror suspects to be ‘interviewed’ in Uzbekistan and elsewhere: places like Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Afghanistan, and Syria).

Yesterday’s Guardian had an article on a cross-party group of MPs planning to look into the extent of UK complicity in this nasty business, which is known by the misleadingly bland, bureaucratic moniker of ‘extraordinary rendition’. (Human Rights Watch calls it ‘outsourcing torture‘.) To bring things full circle, the same paper carries an in-depth report on the massacre of protesters by Uzbek security forces on May 13th, which the world seemed about to forget.

The FCO website soothingly reassures us that ‘Human rights remain at the heart of the foreign policy agenda’, with a quote from Foreign Minister Ian Pearson in July this year: ‘Promoting human rights is integral to the Government’s wider foreign policy and security agenda. It is and will continue to be part of a global strategy bonded by our commitment to play our part in creating a better world’. Elsewhere, we are told that ‘Torture is abhorrent and illegal’, but sadly ‘It is inflicted on men, women and children in well over half the countries of the world. The UK is committed to combating torture globally’.

But the British government continues to rely on flimsy ‘diplomatic assurances‘ that deportees will not be tortured. And a year ago, alarmingly, the Court of Appeal said that evidence obtained under torture in third countries may be used in special terrorism cases, provided that the British government has “neither procured the torture nor connived at it.”

For reference, there’s a handy manual on combating torture, funded by the FCO, with detailed sections on avoiding incommunicado detention, humane conditions of detention and limits on interrogation. The following is from a section headed ‘Duty to Protect in Cases of Expulsion’:

‘The right of a person not to be sent to a country where there are substantial grounds for believing that he or she would face a real risk of being subject to treatment that amounts to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment is also well established in human rights law. This right applies to all people and at all times.’

Extra: Criticism of their stance on this issue has prompted senior judges to remind Ministers and the Tory opposition of the basic notion of the separation of powers: ‘Judges say they will not simply rubber-stamp deals between Britain and countries with poor human rights records promising that deportees will not face torture or inhuman treatment if returned there, but will want to see evidence.’

And as you’d expect, Liberty have something to say on the subject, too.