Summary
One of the more sobering facts that Amnesty International brings to the attention of subscribers is that torture is still a problem in more than half the countries of the world. A depressing statistic in itself, given the international treaty on state use of torture, the signatories to which include Britain and America.
A murkier area, however, is the willingness of countries to use information obtained by such means by other governments. Asked at a Downing Street briefing last Friday if the UK was now prepared, in effect, "to let other people do our dirty work for us", the prime minister's spokesperson primly noted that torture was not something we would encourage, and that we would appeal to other countries to apply international law. That is clearly not how our newly- dismissed ambassador to Uzbekistan reads the Foreign Office's practical application of the law in question.See the full content of this document
Extract
Why Our Man in Tashkent Is Right to Condemn Torture
According to Craig Murray, nobody at the FO denied to him that information passed on by the Uzbek government probably came from tortured detainees. More damningly, he suggests that some of his colleagues privately considered such tactics legitimate in the new- world order of a collective war on terror. ...
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