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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings & Torture |
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March 9th,
2009 - UN Report Condemns Britain over Torture Cases |
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UN Report Condemns Britain
over Torture Cases UK hid illegal acts and breached basic human rights of detainees in US
rendition programme, report finds By Richard Norton-Taylor The Guardian March 9, 2009 Britain is condemned today
in a highly critical UN report for breaching basic human rights and
"trying to conceal illegal acts" in the fight against terrorism. The report is sharply
critical of British co-operation in the transfer of detainees to places where
they are likely to be tortured as part of the US rendition programme. It
accuses British intelligence officers of interviewing detainees held
incommunicado in Pakistan in "so-called safe houses where they were
being tortured". It adds that Britain, and a
number of other countries, sent interrogators to Guantánamo Bay in a further
example of what "can be reasonably understood as implicitly
condoning" torture and ill-treatment. It said the US was able to create
its system for moving terror suspects around foreign jails only with the
support of its allies. Some individuals faced
"prolonged and secret detention" and practices that breached bans
on torture and other forms of ill-treatment, the report says. The document, drawn up for
the UN general assembly by Martin Scheinen, the organisation's special
rapporteur on the "promotion and protection of human rights and
fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism", is likely to add
pressure on the government, which is facing demands from human rights groups
and frontbench opposition MPs for an inquiry into the role of UK security and
intelligence officials in the CIA's secret transfer of detainees to
"dark prisons". The UN report comes days
after fresh disclosures about MI5 co-operation in the secret interrogation
and torture of Binyam Mohamed, the UK resident recently released from
Guantánamo Bay. While the practice of
extraordinary rendition was put in place by the US, it was only possible through
collaboration from other countries, the report says. It identifies the UK,
with Bosnia and Herzegovina, Canada, Croatia, Georgia, Indonesia, Kenya,
Macedonia and Pakistan, as countries that provided "intelligence or have
conducted the initial seizure of an individual before he was transferred to
(mostly unacknowledged) detention centres in Afghanistan, Egypt, Ethiopia,
Jordan, Pakistan, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Syria, Thailand, Uzbekistan …
or to one of the CIA covert detention centres, often referred to as 'black
sites'". The report continues:
"The active or passive participation by states in the interrogation of
persons held by another state constitutes an internationally wrongful act if
the state knew or ought to have known that the person was facing a real risk
of torture or other prohibited treatment." It highlights concerns about
"the increasing use of state secrecy provisions" and accuses the
UK, along with the US, Germany, Italy, Poland, Romania and the former
Yugoslav republic of Macedonia, of concealing "illegal acts from
oversight bodies or judicial authorities". The report says information
that is inaccurate and wrongly recorded can lead to innocent people being
identified as terrorist threats, referring to Bisher al-Rawi, a British resident
seized in Gambia after MI5 tipped off the CIA. External link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/09/torture-guantanamo-rendition |