Downing Street Says » Uzbekistan/Human Rights

Questioned as to whether it was the British Government’s policy to use information obtained under torture, the PMS said that we abided by our commitments under international law. We never used torture to obtain information. Nor would we instigate others to commit torture for that purpose. Asked if there was a blanket ban on information that had been obtained under torture, the PMS said that we would probably look at such information were we to receive it. However, we abided by our commitments under international law. Put to her that we would, in effect, be giving others permission to do our dirty work for us, the PMS said that she would disagree. It was not something we would encourage and we would also appeal to other countries to ensure that they too abided by international law. Asked if the UK had encouraged Uzbekistan to abide by international law, the PMS said she had no doubt that we had. Asked for a reaction to Craig Murray’s removal as British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, the PMS said that it was a personnel issue and should be dealt with in the appropriate way. Asked if she was implying that the Prime Minister had had no involvement in the issue, the PMS said that it was a personnel matter which was being dealt with by the Foreign Office.

1 Comment »

Aside from all the obvious moral objections to using torture, it is well known that information obtained through torture is completely unreliable. It is not good enough for the Government to not ‘encourage’ the use of torture. The government should condemn the use of torture, actively campaign against anyone using torture and refuse to allow the ‘information’ obtained to be used in British or European courts.

I wouldn’t put it beyond certain parties to put Iraqis on the rack until they ‘confessed’ that there really were WMD in Iraq and they have been secretly given to other muslim fundamentalist oil producing states who are going to use them against the west in 45 minutes. Of course these people would then have to be executed before they had chance to change their story. Traditionally those who confessed under torture were burned at the stake or hung, drawn and quartered but I’m sure the Government will be very quick to point out that they would never ‘encourage’ other countries to do that.
Comment by Uncarved Block — 16 Oct 2004 on 10:17 am | Link

RSS feed for comments on this post.

Post a public comment

Name (required)
E-mail (required)
(You must give an email address, but it will not be displayed to the public.)
Website
(You may give your website, and it will be displayed to the public.)

Comments:

This is not a way of contacting the Prime Minister. If you would like to contact the Prime Minister, go to the 10 Downing Street official site.

Privacy note: Shortly after posting, your name and comment will be displayed on the site. This means that people searching for your name on the Internet will be able to find and read your comment.

Original PMOS briefings are © Crown Copyright. Crown Copyright material is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of HMSO and the Queen's Printer for Scotland. Click-use licence number C02W0004089. Material is reproduced from the original 10 Downing Street source, but may not be the most up-to-date version of the briefings, which might be revised at the original source. Users should check with the original source in case of revisions. Comments are © Copyright contributors. Everything else is © Copyright Downing Street Says.

» Friday, October 15, 2004

Uzbekistan/Human Rights

1 Comment »

Post a public comment

Search

Supported by

Recent Briefings

Archives

Links

Syndicate (RSS/XML)

Credits

Enquiries