Mark Oliver - Monday October 17, 2005
Seven law lords began deliberating today whether Britain can use evidence against terror suspects that may have been obtained by torture in other countries.
The case has been brought by eight of the 10 foreign men who were previously detained without charge under anti-terror legislation at Belmarsh high-security prison.
Ben Emmerson QC, for the detainees, told the panel of law lords that the appeal court was wrong to give a ruling last August that permitted the use of evidence that may have been gleaned from torture abroad.
He said the ruling by two of three appeal court judges gave "insufficient weight" to the "constitutional responsibility to suppress the manifestations of torture".
The men making the legal challenge were released after the House of Lords ruled in December 2004 that holding foreign terror suspects indefinitely without trial breached their human rights.
Eight of the 10 Belmarsh detainees are now being held under Home Office control orders that include a form of house arrest. Two of the men have exercised their option to leave the UK.
Mr Emmerson said the case is not about whether information possibly obtained by torture from abroad can be used to stop an attack.
The question under consideration was, he said, whether the evidence can be used in a law court or at a hearing of the Special Immigration Appeals Tribunals (Siac), which holds secret hearings involving terrorist suspects.
The appeal court ruling last August permitted evidence possibly obtained by torture abroad to be used in the detainees' Siac hearings.
Lawyers for the remaining eight men argue that the appeal court ruling breached article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which bans torture or degrading treatment.
The men's lawyers say they are being held on evidence obtained by torture carried out by third parties at the US military detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
"This case raises in acute form the dilemma of any democracy when the judiciary is called upon to reconcile the protection of national security and the protection of human rights," Mr Emmerson told the law lords.
Judgments from the law lords are normally handed down between six and eight weeks after they have heard all of the evidence.
This is the first terrorism-related human rights case to reach the Lords since the July 7 bombings in London, and the first to test whether the judges agree with Tony Blair that believe the suicide bombings have changed the rules of the game".
Lord Carlile, a Liberal Democrat peer appointed by the government to review its anti-terror legislation, has said evidence from possible torture should be used in a way that was "proportional" and not "fixed".
His argument is that the evidence could not be ignored if it indicated dozens or possibly hundreds of lives could be at risk from an attack.
However, Kevin Martin, the president of the Law Society, which will give evidence to the law lords, said the "use of torture is draconian and abhorrent".
"If this ruling is not overturned, we are worried it will prove to be a green light for torturers," he said.
NGOs such as Liberty and Amnesty International argue that the government is chipping away at civil rights, becoming complicit in torture, risking using unreliable evidence and sending a dangerous message to the rest of the world
British victims of torture joined campaigners outside parliament today to sign a petition urging the government to ban evidence obtained by torture abroad.
Bill Sampson, 46, who has dual British and Canadian nationality and lives in Penrith, Cumbria, said that he suffered beatings, sleep deprivation and sexual molestation during 964 days in solitary confinement in Saudi Arabia after being arrested on false charges of terrorism and spying.
"After so many days of that type of brutality, you will say whatever it takes to stop the pain," he said. "From the questions your interrogators are asking you, you can gather what it is that they want to hear and you will tell them it."
Amnesty's UK director, Kate Allen, said: "This is a momentous case. The UK is at an important crossroads. It can reaffirm its stand against torture, which is absolutely banned, or slide towards illegality by its tacit acceptance that torture is sometimes okay."
The hearing was adjourned and will resume tomorrow.
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