Europe - Getting away with Torture

The European Union has an impressive array of human rights instruments designed to prevent the use of torture. The European Convention for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment provides for on-site inspections of prisons and other places of detention. Compliance with the Convention is monitored by the Committee for the Prevention of Torture. Further, the prevention and eradication of torture worldwide is claimed to be a key objective of the EU’s human rights policy.[1] The EU seeks to back up this commitment by funding anti-torture programmes throughout the world within the framework of the European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR). Between 2000 and 2006, EIDHR projects on torture received 75.5 million Euros, the second largest thematic budget under the programme.[2] 

This “commitment” to eradicating torture worldwide, however, is increasingly being seen as a show of double standards[3]. How can the EU call for respect for human rights by China or Russia, asks Amnesty International, when the EU itself is “complicit in torture”.[4] European governments have continued to illegally transfer prisoners to countries where they risk being tortured or ill-treated. International organisations report that several EU member states “had looked the other way” or aided in the abduction, secret detention and illegal transfer of prisoners to countries where they were in fact tortured or otherwise ill-treated.[5]

‘Just don’t do it here’

According to article 3 of the UN Convention Against Torture, no state party may expel, return, or extradite a person to a state where there are substantial grounds for believing that he or she may be subjected to torture.[6] Unfortunately, it has not been uncommon for European governments to send persons to states in which there is a high risk that they will face torture. In a number of cases, European governments have been found to have deported or expelled individuals to places where they risked being tortured, or were in fact tortured following deportation.

As it is illegal to extradite an individual to a place where he or she is at risk of being tortured, European governments have extradited individuals following a so-called ‘diplomatic assurance’, that is, a promise from the receiving government that it will not torture the person being deported. The EU appears to have learnt little from its experience of funding human rights projects around the world. Its faith in the credibility of such ‘assurances’ is touching. Its actions have nevertheless resulted in deportees being tortured. The duplicity is appalling – EU states are effectively letting it be known that torture can be tolerated as long as it is not committed within their borders.

In 2001, Ahmed Agiza and Mohammed al-Zari, asylum seekers in Sweden, were expelled from Sweden based on an assurance against torture from the Egyptian government. They were then transferred to Cairo via United States agents. They subsequently alleged, during visits by family members, lawyers and Swedish diplomats, that they had been tortured in detention. [7] The UN Committee against Torture severely criticised Sweden’s actions, as diplomatic assurances carry with them no enforcement mechanism and provide no real guarantee that the individual being extradited will not be tortured.[8]  

The European Court of Human Rights has also held that the mere “existence of domestic laws and accession to international treaties guaranteeing respect for fundamental rights in principle are not in themselves sufficient to ensure adequate protection against the risk of ill-treatment where… reliable sources have reported practices resorted to or tolerated by the authorities which are manifestly contrary to the principles of the Convention.”[9] 

The United Kingdom has been accused of outsourcing torture to Pakistan as part of counter-terrorism operations. Although the UK has denied such allegations, the Guardian has exposed cases where British intelligence services may have been involved in the torture of Britons in Pakistan.[10] Tariq Mahmood from Birmingham was abducted in Pakistan in 2003 and released without charge five months later. His family claimed that he was questioned and tortured by MI5 and US intelligence services. They have chosen not to make a detailed statement for fear of the safety of their relatives in Pakistan. Another man to have faced torture in Pakistan is a British medical student, who wishes to remain anonymous due to fear. He reported being abducted at gunpoint in 2005, before being taken to the offices of Pakistan's Intelligence Bureau opposite the British Deputy High Commission in Karachi where he was questioned regarding the July 2005 London bombings. He reports being “whipped, beaten, sleep deprived, [and] threatened with executions”. A third Briton, Salahuddin Amin described the abuse he faced in his ten month detention – he was “whipped, beaten with sticks, suspended from his wrists and threatened with an electric drill” in between being interviewed many times by MI5 officers.[11]

Although allegations must be investigated further, Labour MP, John McDonnell asserted his belief that there is “sufficient evidence from this and other cases to demonstrate that British officials outsourced the torture of British nationals to a Pakistani intelligence agency.”[12] The London director of Human Rights Watch, Tom Porteous was of a similar opinion. He said, "It is pretty clear the US and the UK are relying rather heavily on the well-known abusive Pakistani intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, in the counter-terrorism operations. It is one of the most brutal intelligence agencies in the world."[13] If these well grounded suspicions are confirmed then Britain will have a lot to answer for in terms of its severe breach of the human rights of its own citizens.

Secret detention centres

There is evidence to suggest that since 11 September 2001, Poland and Romania, have been home to secret detention centres where suspected terrorists, including Abu Subaydah and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, were sent by the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to be detained, interrogated and often tortured.[14] Swiss politician and a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, Dick Marty, was appointed to lead an investigation into the secret CIA detention centres in Europe. He published a report in June 2007 which confirmed the allegations in his June 2006 report that the CIA was operating secret detention centres in Poland and Romania and that other European governments were assisting the CIA in facilitating this arrangement.[15]

The Polish and Romanian governments denied the allegations and the then EU Justice Commissioner stated that he did not have the power to launch an official inquiry, leading a British Member of the EU Parliament to observe that the EU’s mechanisms for ensuring respect for human rights standards are “frankly inadequate”.[16]

To facilitate these renditions to secret detention centres the CIA had to collude with other EU member states. The UK, Germany, Austria, Italy and Sweden are amongst the countries which are said to have participated to various degrees.[17] European governments have also allowed prisoners to be transferred to Guantánamo Bay through their airspace. On 28 January 2008, it was confirmed that 728 prisoners were flown to Guantánamo Bay, through Portuguese airspace, and therefore with Portuguese jurisdiction.[18] UK airports as well as Ireland’s Shannon airport have been stop off points for suspected terrorists on their way to detention centers where they are likely to face ill-treatment and torture. [19]

Conclusion

The implications of the EU’s hypocrisy on the issue of torture are obvious. Few countries can be expected to heed the EU’s grandstanding and put in place or strengthen anti-torture laws and policies. The EU’s overall credibility on human rights has been in doubt for a long time. Its human rights dialogues with countries outside the EU are now little more than exercises in political correctness. And the massive funding of anti-torture programmes across the world is primarily intended to assuage public concern at home, resulting only in piecemeal, ad-hoc steps such as the rehabilitation of a handful of victims of torture, the desultory production of ‘reports’ on torture and the spending of vast amounts on conferences and workshops, rather than the institutional strengthening of anti-torture accountability mechanisms worldwide.