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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings, Torture and Big Money |
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July 20th,
2008 - MPs Say Cannot Rely on U.S. Torture Assurances |
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MPs Say Cannot Rely on U.S. Torture
Assurances By Avril Ormsby Reuters July 20, 2008 London - Britain should no
longer rely on U.S. assurances that it does not use torture on terrorism
suspects, an influential committee of MPs said in a report released on
Sunday. Britain had previously taken
those assurances on face value but after the CIA acknowledged
"waterboarding" three detainees, Britain should change its stance,
the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee said in its annual report on
human rights. Foreign Secretary David
Miliband told parliament in April he thought the technique, where a suspect
is tied down on a board and water is poured over his or her hooded face in a
form of simulated drowning, amounted to torture. U.S. President George W.
Bush vetoed legislation in March that would have banned the CIA from using
the technique. "Given the clear
differences in definition, the UK can no longer rely on U.S. assurances that
it does not use torture and we recommend that the government does not rely on
such assurances in the future," the MPs said in their report. Britain is a signatory to a
U.N. convention barring the extradition of a person to another state where
there are substantial grounds for believing that they would be in danger of
being subjected to torture. The Foreign Office declined
to comment specifically on the issue of torture, saying only that it would
respond in detail to the wide-ranging report at a later date. In their report, the MPs
also called for an exhaustive analysis of current U.S. interrogation
techniques, using information publicly available or supplied by the U.S., to
see if any other differences exist. Britain had a moral and
legal obligation to ensure its airports and airspace were not used for
renditions - the secret transfer of CIA prisoners, they said. This applied
even if the rendition flights did not have a detainee on board. “Outsourcing Terror” Allegations Miliband was forced to
apologise to parliament in February after it emerged two U.S. planes carrying
terrorism suspects on rendition flights had landed and refuelled at a U.S.
base on the British Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia in 2002 despite
previous government denials based on U.S. assurances. Human rights groups had long
cast doubt on those assurances and the MPs' report urged the government to
press the United States to reveal "the full scale of the rendition
problem." It also called for an
investigation into allegations that the government "outsourced"
interrogation techniques involving the torture of British nationals by
Pakistani authorities. In April, The Guardian
newspaper reported a number of British citizens who said that they were
detained and tortured by Pakistan intelligence, and interrogated by British
intelligence officers in that country, the committee said. "It is not acceptable
for the government to use an individual's dual nationality as an excuse to
leave him or her vulnerable to the prospect of possible torture," the
committee added. Britain has denied outsourcing torture. External link: http://uk.reuters.com/article/UKNews1/idUKL2066334820080720 |