Governments in the UK have traditionally exhibited a somewhat divided attitude to the use of torture. The trial of Sir Walter Raleigh in 1603 raised, in essence, the same issues as those in the more recent case of Abu Qatada, the cleric sought by Jordan. How fair can a trial be where evidence has been adduced by torture which is later retracted by the witnesses concerned? By and large, history has been kind to Walter Raleigh: the media are not so sympathetic to Abu Qatada, the ‘terror cleric’.
Contradictions in the attitude of the UK to human rights go back. They were expressed by the advocate for Greece in the very first case (about repression in Cyprus) brought under the European Convention on Human Rights: ‘I am the first to admit the paradox - and personally I regret it - that by a chance of fate the first government to be brought to the bar by another government is the UK, which governs a country which surely, more than any other in Europe, has always shown concern for human rights.’ In the early days of the UN, this contradiction was often expressed institutionally. The Foreign Office tended to favour human rights: the Colonial Office was more equivocal. The latter had something to worry about: a number of colonies even had legislative authority for collective punishment.
In Kenya, the suppression of the Mau Mau uprising in the late 1950s was particularly brutal and illustrates an unforeseen consequence of human rights abuses: a sense of injustice lingers. The present UK government faces litigation on behalf of those allegedly maltreated. President Obama believes his grandfather was among them. His continuing bitterness is said to be the reason that he symbolically returned a statue of Winston Churchill given to president Bush.
Not so long ago, the complicity of UK governments in state-sponsored torture could be presented as a primarily historic issue. In January 2004, on a winter’s day when a raging storm made Docklands more than usually bleak, Lord Hope delivered a Clifford Chance lecture on torture in which he traced its history, largely in the 16th and 17th centuries, noting that Scotland had, for a time, played a helpful role as a rendition destination for those requiring treatment unfortunately banned south of border. If Lord Hope’s antennae quivered at emerging stories of the position of the Bush administration, he gave no sign.
However, some 18 months before this lecture, John Yoo and Jay Bybee had authored the now notorious memoranda on standards of conduct in US interrogation of al-Qaida suspects. They sought to redefine ‘torture’ as only the ‘most extreme acts… ordinarily associated with a sufficiently serious physical condition or injury such as death, organ failure or serious impairment of bodily functions’. Waterboarding was OK: mock executions too much. Yoo is now a professor and Baybee a federal judge. Despite their apparent survival, Colin Powell’s former chief of staff warned of the lifelong consequences for them to the Guardian: they ‘should never travel outside the US, except perhaps to Saudi Arabia and Israel. They broke the law; they violated their professional ethical code. In the future, some government may build the case necessary to prosecute them in a foreign court or in an international court’.
The prevalence of torture committed by its closest ally has caused difficulty for the UK. It was pressure from the Americans for more information that created the backdrop for the UK treatment of detainees in Iraq and led ultimately to the death of Baha Mousa. More recently, the case of Abdel Hakim Belhadj, a major anti-Gaddafi leader, emerged, literally, from the rubble of Tripoli. Human Rights Watch found documents in a ruin implicating the CIA and MI6 in his arrest, rendition and torture. David Cameron was forced to announce an inquiry into UK complicity in torture under Sir Peter Gibson. Alas, this has been abandoned after individuals (including Belhadj) and NGOs (including Justice) were alienated by somewhat hamfisted government attempts to maintain secrecy.
All this is vital background to Abu Qatada’s unpopular case. The European Court of Human Rights found that Jordan was likely to prosecute him on return, as it had done in his absence, on the basis of evidence from witnesses that it tortured. Knowing that, the UK should not send him back. The government, the redtop press and rather too many MPs want to close their eyes to such torture, citing domestic considerations as more important. But, if Abu Qatada has incited murder, prosecute him. His fate is that he is demonised as the incarnation of evil. Hate-filled his ideas maybe - but the facts may be more than a little complicated. MI6 is hinted to have something to hide. And, whatever else he might have done, Abu Qatada has, at least twice, thrown his weight behind attempts to secure the release of hostages - including kidnapped peace activist Norman Kember.
Many voices have been raised to argue that the use of torture by Jordan is Abu Qatada’s problem and not ours. But, calculate the realpolitik consequences of losing the esteem of people like president Obama or Abdel Hakim Belhadj. Given the volatility of global politics, the UK might even gain materially - as it certainly would morally - from a position of intolerance towards regimes that have institutionalised the terror of torture. The UK has been prepared to advance human rights in Libya, Afghanistan and Iraq down the barrel of a gun. Its commitment should start at home. Abu Qatada should be prosecuted here or sent back to Jordan only when that regime can properly be trusted not to torture those in its power.
Roger Smith is director of the law reform and human rights organisation Justice
No comments yet