Counter Terror with Justice

No justification for torture

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Torture is never justified

Still from the video ‘Waiting for the Guards’ simulating torture in secret detention

Over 300 members of the Philippine National Police and human rights activists took part in the run against torture, 26 June 2008.

Torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, like slavery and genocide, are always wrong. This principle was established many years ago, and is enshrined in international law.

Everyone has the right to be free from torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment (‘other ill-treatment'), according to Article 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Amnesty International’s Report 2008 shows that 60 years after the Declaration was adopted by the United Nations, people are still tortured or ill-treated around the world. The Report highlights the situation in 81 countries, but cases of torture and other ill-treatment also occur in many other countries.

The organization has documented torture for decades, including in situations where governments invoked the threat of terrorism to cover up or justify its use. But actions in recent years taken by states in the name of counter-terrorism threaten to weaken respect for the absolute prohibition and show the need to reinforce understanding of its importance.

What is torture? What is ill-treatment?

At the heart of the definition of torture in the UN Convention against Torture is the intentional infliction of severe physical or mental pain or suffering in order to obtain information or a confession, to punish, intimidate or coerce someone, or for any other reason based on discrimination.

People may not always agree whether a particular form of abuse constitutes torture or other ill-treatment, but both are absolutely prohibited under international law, including in times of war or other public emergencies.

Respect for the prohibition is not only a legal obligation. The universal prohibition is based on an international consensus that every act of torture or other ill-treatment is morally repugnant – an offence to human dignity.

Consensus against torture under threat

Some of the measures that governments have taken in response to the attacks of 11 September 2001, as well as attacks or the threat of attacks in other countries since then, have amounted to a serious assault on the framework of human rights protection. States have used torture and other ill-treatment and have tried to justify this in the name of security, and to confer impunity on the perpetrators.

Some have sought to avoid their obligations and responsibility by conceding that "torture" is wrong and illegal, while at the same time trying to introduce definitions of "torture" and "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" at the national level that exclude particular techniques or circumstances.

The US government has been at the forefront of this assault on the prohibition of torture and other ill-treatment. It has argued that international human rights law does not apply in the context of what it labels as a global and near-perpetual "war", but has selectively ignored the fact that the laws of war also prohibit such abuses. These arguments are almost universally rejected by other states, national and international courts, and experts.

US government authorises torture

The photographs of US soldiers humiliating and terrorizing detainees in Abu Ghraib shocked the world when they were published in 2004. The pictures followed numerous allegations of torture and other ill-treatment reported from US detention centres in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantánamo.

The Abu Ghraib scandal prompted top US officials to condemn the exposed abuses and to initiate limited investigations into, and reviews of, detention practices. Yet these did not result in accountability of all those responsible, reparation for the victims or adequate measures to prevent such human rights violations from being repeated in the future.

Indeed, we know that the US administration has authorised interrogation methods – including stress positions, prolonged isolation, sensory deprivation and simulated drowning – that constitute torture or other ill-treatment under international law.

The US government has operated a programme of rendition – transferring individuals suspected of terrorism from one state to another without due process, including to countries where they face a real risk of torture and other ill-treatment – as well as a program of secret detention, in which detainees have become victims of enforced disappearance.

The US administration has authorized torture and other ill-treatment and has reserved the right to do so again if the "circumstances" warrant it. The US laws, legal opinions and executive orders that have facilitated such practices must be amended or revoked, and impunity for abuses ended.

Deals with states that torture

Other states around the world have contributed to weakening the international prohibition of torture by seeking to forcibly transfer detainees to countries where they are at real risk of torture.

Governments in countries including the United States, Austria, Canada, Germany, Italy, the UK and Sweden have sought and accepted "diplomatic assurances" from receiving states that detainees will not face torture or other serious human rights violations.

These "assurances" are essentially unenforceable promises and, in accepting them, the sending state effectively acknowledges the torture of other detainees in the receiving country. In cases where the promise of proper treatment has been broken, the individuals involved have suffered drastic consequences.

Rather than asking for exemptions for a few individuals, states must instead work together to ensure that all torture and other ill-treatment end. Diplomatic assurances should be condemned and abandoned.

Old patterns of repression, new rhetoric

Torture and other ill-treatment are not new. But, in countries across the world where torture and other ill-treatment were rife before 2001, governments can only be encouraged by the new climate of tolerance towards such abuses.

In the past five years, for example, the Tunisian authorities have arrested hundreds, if not thousands, of people suspected of terrorism-related offences. Many have been tortured and otherwise ill-treated, held incommunicado and made to disappear. Some have been sentenced after unfair trials to long prison terms or even death.

In the context of the military campaign in Pakistan against al-Qa’ida and the Taleban, thousands of people, both Pakistani and foreign nationals, have been arbitrarily detained and subjected to enforced disappearance.

Torture does not provide security

At the United Nations Security Council and General Assembly, and in many other international organisations, states themselves have recognised that, while every government has a duty to protect people from violent attacks, it must fully respect its human rights obligations while doing so.

Real security can only be achieved through strengthening the human rights framework, not through undermining it by resorting to unlawful practices such as torture.

Torture and other ill-treatment:

... are always wrong, regardless of what the suspect is thought to know or to have done
… are banned absolutely under international law
... are unreliable interrogation techniques
… spread and, once authorized, are never limited to "just once"
… corrode the rule of law and undermine the criminal justice system
… do not make us safer
… CAN NEVER, EVER, BE JUSTIFIED

What needs to happen?

All states must:

condemn all forms of torture and other ill-treatment and speak out against governments that perpetrate, are complicit in, or fail to act against such abuse;
prevent these practices;
bring to justice those responsible for authorising and inflicting torture and other ill-treatment;
ensure that information obtained by torture or other ill-treatment cannot be invoked as evidence in any proceedings, except against a person accused of abuse as evidence of the abuse.