An MI5 expert in
terrorism has admitted that the security service would use information
extracted from tortured prisoners as evidence in court.
The secret witness told a panel of judges that in spite of knowing that
a victim had been tortured or had come from a country where the regime
sanctioned torture, she would still consider their testimony to be
relevant to security service investigations.
The admissions will add to growing public concern over the detainees at
Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, who were questioned by the CIA and by MI5
officers. Critics claim that the government has condoned torture by the US
in its attempts to garner evidence against people it suspects of having
been involved in al-Qaida or the Taliban.
The implication of the testimony has shocked human rights campaigners,
as well as lawyers and the families of those detained. Article three of
the Human Rights Act says "no one shall be subjected to torture or inhuman
or degrading treatment or punishment".
Malcolm Smart, director of the Medical Foundation for the Care of
Victims of Torture, criticised the government for being party to torture,
"either directly or by proxy".
He said: "Information obtained under torture is cheap and dirty
information. British intelligence should regard it with the deepest
suspicion. It is well-established that such information is not reliable.
International law requires that courts reject evidence gathered by torture
as inadmissible. If the intelligence services are cooperating in this way
then they are in effect condoning, even encouraging, the torturers."
The security service expert, known only as witness A, told a hearing of
the special immigration appeals commission in London: "It doesn't mean to
say that because somebody is tortured that they have provided information
that's not actually true."
Speaking to a panel of three judges who are hearing the appeals of 10
men detained without charge or trial since December 2001, the witness
said: "We would weigh all information carefully, no matter where it came
from, against our other knowledge and sources before we made an
assessment, but it is still, obviously, speaking theoretically, possible
that intelligence provided which may have been obtained in a way that
would not be compatible with somebody's human rights could still be
assessed to be reliable based on existing knowledge or because we've
conducted further investigations on the basis of what they've told us."
The home secretary believes that the men appealing against detention
are connected to terrorism. They are all asylum seekers or refugees. The
government has said it is holding them because they cannot be returned to
their country of origin as they may be tortured there.
Because the majority of these hearings are held in closed session, it
is unclear how much of the evidence is reliant on that obtained under
duress. Lawyers for the 10 have tried to establish the extent to which the
home secretary is relying on evidence in closed session that is a result
of torture but the government need not reveal this. The home secretary
says it is up to the men to prove that the evidence has been obtained
under torture but the men are not allowed to hear the evidence against
them.
It is understood that testimony has been taken from detainees both at
Bagram air base in Afghanistan and in Guantanamo Bay. Campaigners allege
that torture took place in both.
A US military coroner, Elizabeth Rowse, ruled that two men from
Afghanistan held at a secret CIA interrogation centre at Bagram air base
had been killed under interrogation. She confirmed that the official cause
of death of the two men was "homicide".
A further death at a holding facility near Asadabad is under
investigation.
Witness A said the security service had no concerns about the way the
Americans were gathering evidence that she was aware of. She had not been
aware of any deaths in custody and would be surprised to learn that people
held at Bagram had been tortured.
But US officials have previously admitted using "stress and duress" on
prisoners including sleep deprivation, denial of medication for battle
injuries, and forcing them to stand or kneel for hours on end with hoods
on. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have denounced this as
torture as defined by international treaty.
