Tag Archives: Torture
3 July 2014
Human rights groups have revealed previously undisclosed evidence that more planes than had been admitted were involved in the extraordinary rendition of terrorist suspects around the world. This has raised new questions about the alleged use of the British overseas territory Diego Garcia as a United States secret prison. According to human rights groups, the atoll in the Indian Ocean that is leased to the US has been used to detain suspects in conflict with basic human rights. (more…)
Source: The Guardian | UK urged to tell all on US rendition flights
16 June 2014
A report from the charity Freedom From Torture (FFT) has raised concern that British aid money may be funding police who are employing rape as a means of state-sanctioned torture against women in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The report found that the Congolese police and security staff are systematically raping the female opponents of President Joseph Kabila, after they were imprisoned in state detention facilities. The report is based on medical evidence from 34 female political activists who fled from DRC to the UK. The findings have raised concerns about the British government’s programme to give over GBP 60m to the DRC’s national police and ‘internal security sector’ to enhance its performance and accountability. (more…)
Source: The Guardian | British aid money may unwittingly be funding rape and torture in DR Congo
13 March 2014
States that condemn torture while using information and products obtained through the practice in other countries are hypocritical, according to UN Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment Juan Méndez, saying ‘[g]overnments cannot condemn the evil of torture and other ill-treatment at the international level while condoning it at the national level’. He told the Human Rights Council that any use of torture-tainted information, even if the torture has been committed by agents of another state, is an act of acquiescence in torture that compromises the user-state’s responsibility and leads to individual and state complicity in acts of torture. (more…)
Source: Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights | News | “No more hypocrisy, stop condemning torture committed by others while accepting its products” - UN expert
9 December 2013
The lawyers for two Guantánamo Bay detainees claimed before the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) that the detainees were tortured in a secret ‘black site’ in Poland. Poland has been brought before the ECtHR for allowing US officials to use ‘enhanced’ interrogations and ‘waterboarding’ technics within its territory. Ben Emmerson, the UN special rapporteur on counter-terrorism argued before the Court, where ‘systematic human rights violations are alleged to have occurred, the right to know the truth is not only an individual right that belongs to the immediate victim of the violation, but also a collective rights that belongs to the whole of society.’ (more…)
Source: The Guardian | Guantánamo Bay detainees claim Poland allowed CIA torture
17 April 2013
The Constitution Project released a report on detainee treatment in the war on terror, concluding that the US engaged in torture and that many other states cooperated in the rendition programme.
The Constitution Project is a non-profit US based think tank on constitutional and legal questions. The report describes that international assistance in rendition ranged from capturing suspects and turning them over to US custody, assisting in interrogations and abuse, to allowing stopovers of known CIA flights carrying detainees.
Source: The Report of the Constitution Project's Task Force on Detainee Treatment | April 2013
Source: The New York Times | U.S. Engaged in Torture After 9/11, Review Concludes