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U.K.: highest court to rule on torture evidence London, HRW: ­A ruling by Britain’s highest court on the use of torture evidence is likely to have profound implications for the worldwide ban on torture, Human Rights Watch (HRW)said today.
Britain’s highest court will convene on Monday, October 17 to consider whether torture evidence obtained from third countries is permitted in domestic British law. The House of Lords Judicial Committee (commonly known as “the law lords”) will hear an appeal against an August 2004 majority decision by the Court of Appeal that the U.K. government was entitled to rely on torture evidence in special terrorism cases, provided that the U.K. “neither procured nor connived at” the torture. The use of evidence obtained through torture or other ill-treatment is prohibited by international law.
“When it comes to torture, the rules of the game must not change.” said Holly Cartner, Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch, “You can’t accept torture evidence without condoning torture.”
Human Rights Watch is part of a coalition of fourteen human rights and anti-torture organizations intervening in the House of Lords case.
Under the Convention against Torture, to which 140 countries including the U.K. are party, evidence obtained under torture is inadmissible in “any proceedings” before a court. The rule is also part of customary international law binding on all states. But a two-to-one majority in the Court of Appeal held that because the convention is not part of British law, the courts did not have to exclude such evidence.
The U.N. Committee against Torture criticized the British government’s refusal to disavow the use of torture evidence at its November 2004 review of the U.K.’s compliance with the torture convention.
The British government’s assertion that it is entitled to rely on evidence which third countries have obtained through torture is part of its growing efforts to erode the torture prohibition. The government is seeking to bypass the prohibition against returning people to torture by obtaining promises of humane treatment to allow it to deport terrorism suspects. Despite clear evidence that such promises do not provide an effective safeguard against ill-treatment, it has already concluded a memorandum of understanding with Jordan, and is negotiating similar agreements with Algeria, Libya, Egypt, and other countries with poor records on torture. The government is also seeking to redefine the scope of the ban on returns to torture, through political pressure on the British courts, and an intervention in a Dutch case in the European Court of Human Rights, arguing that courts should balance the risk of torture against national security concerns.
“The U.K. government’s attack on the torture ban is deeply troubling,” said Cartner. “It threatens more than half of a century of efforts­including by Britain itself­to eradicate torture worldwide.”
The case, A and others, is being brought by ten foreign nationals previously certified under the Anti-Terrorism Crime and Security Act 2001 as suspected international terrorists and subject to indefinite detention without trial. The majority of the men are Algerian. In December 2004, the Law Lords ruled that indefinite detention was unlawful. The present appeal arises from a July 2002 decision by the Special Immigration Appeals Commission that it was entitled to consider evidence that may have been obtained under torture in determining the men’s appeals against certification.
Two of the men have left the U.K. and two had their certificates revoked prior to December 2004. Six of the men were subject to control orders under the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005 following their release from indefinite detention in March 2005, but an unspecified number of the six were subsequently detained on immigration charges pending their deportation on national security grounds.
Members of the coalition intervening in the case are: The AIRE Centre, Amnesty International, the Association for the Prevention of Torture, British Irish Rights Watch, The Committee on the Administration of Justice, Doctors for Human Rights, Human Rights Watch, The International Federation of Human Rights, INTERIGHTS, The Law Society of England and Wales, Liberty, the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, REDRESS, and the World Organisation Against Torture.
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Britain's highest court, the House of Lords Judicial Committee,  meets on Monday to consider the legality of the use of evidence extracted under torture by third countries. 

The UK's Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005 allows the government to detain foreign nationals indefinitely if there is sufficient evidence to suspect them of terrorist involvement. The case now under examination centres around ten British-based foreign nationals, who have been detained under the Act's provisions.

The evidence against the detainees has not been publicised. But their lawyers claim there are grounds for believing that it may have been extracted under torture by a foreign government.
   
In November 2004, the UN Committee Against Torture, which monitors implementation of the Convention Against Torture, criticised Britain's refusal to rule out the use of information extracted under torture.

Britain is a state party to the Convention Against Torture, which states that the use of evidence obtained through torture can never be admitted in any court. But the Convention has not been formally adopted into British domestic law. 

Human Rights Watch today released a statement arguing that the stipulation against the use of information extracted under torture is nonetheless "binding on all states" under customary international law. 

Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and a number of human rights organisations have raised wider concerns about the case, arguing that the use of information extracted under torture amounts to condoning the use of torture. 

British domestic law outlaws the use of torture. The British government officially condemns the use of torture in any circumstances. But it argues that the use by Britain of information extracted through torture by a third party may sometimes be required in order to protect the British public from acts of terrorism. The British government maintains that the use of such information does not, in and of itself, condone or encourage torture.