[Documents/Docheader.htm]United Kingdom: Courts’ use of evidence obtained under torture and legal possibilities for the indefinite detention of foreigners without charge or trial
Doc. 10284
20 September 2004Written question No 454 to the Committee of Ministers
presented by Mr Masson
Mr Jean-Louis Masson wishes to draw the Committee of Ministers’ attention to the serious human rights violations taking place in the United Kingdom, under the pretext of a clamp down on terrorism. Two examples illustrate these violations in a member state which, until now, has been one of the countries with the highest regard for individual freedoms.
First, the Anti Terrorism Crime and Security Act 2001 allows for the detention of foreign nationals for an indefinite period of time, simply because they are suspected of terrorist activities, without any concrete evidence in support of the charges. As stated by Liberty, a human rights association, the Government “intends to jail people not for anything they have done, but for what the Home Secretary thinks they might have done or might do in the future”. A parliamentary committee has also acknowledged the arbitrary nature of such detention without trial for an indefinite period. In July 2002, one court described the provision as “discriminatory and disproportionate”.
On 11 August 2004 the High Court of Appeal in London even went much further, holding that the British Home Secretary had the right to rely on evidence ''coming into his hands which has or may have been obtained through torture by agencies of other states over which he has no power of direction”.British courts therefore now believe that evidence obtained under torture is admissible so long as the torture took place in some other country. The case in question concerned ten foreign nationals who had been detained without charge or trial for an indefinite period of time, after being submitted to various forms of torture and ill-treatment at the American base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The courts explicitly condoned the use of torture in American camps and accepted the confessions thus obtained, arguing that the United Kingdom had neither initiated nor was complicit in the torture. This verdict has given rise to numerous protests in the United Kingdom. For Gareth Pierce, one of the lawyers of the ten detainees, it was a ''terrifying decision, which shows that we have completely lost our way in this country legally and morally.” Arguing that it was encouraging torture, the British branch of Amnesty International pointed out that it was “a fundamental duty of all courts to act as a bulwark against human rights violations. The Court of Appeal has shamefully abdicated this most important duty.”
As it is the Council of Europe’s role to safeguard freedoms, I wish to ask the Committee of Ministers if it intends ask the European Court of Human Rights to rule on whether the above-mentioned facts are a violation of the European Convention on Human Rights and the UN Convention on torture.
Signed [1]:
MASSON, Jean-Louis, France, EDG
SOC
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