Freedom from Torture condemns Libyan-UK "no torture" agreement

The signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the UK and Libya over the treatment of people who may be deported from Britain to the North African state is a further erosion of Britain's respect for human rights, the Medical Foundation has warned.

In its pursuit of the War on Terror, the charity says, the British government appears ready to sacrifice not just well established legal principles, but common sense too.

The Medical Foundation has helped 80 Libyan victims of torture in the past 20 years, six of them this year alone. It views with deep suspicion the Libyan government's assurance that Islamists deported from Britain will not be tortured.

Medical Foundation director of public affairs Sherman Carroll said today: "We oppose the return of anyone to a state that routinely uses torture. The agreement between the two governments is, in all likelihood, not worth the paper it is written on.

"Until recently Libya was held by the West to be a terror state, a pariah where respect for human rights was non-existent. Times may have changed, with the West, particularly the US and UK prepared to look more benignly on a country that itself faces Islamic opposition from within, becoming by default an ally of convenience.

"But the modus operandi of its security services would suggest that it is business as usual for the torturers. The US State Department's 2004 annual human rights survey states that Libyan law does not prohibit torture or cruel inhuman or degrading treatment, and there were reports that government officials employed them.

"The report says: ‘Security personnel reportedly routinely tortured prisoners during interrogations or as punishment. Government agents reportedly detained and tortured foreign workers, particularly those from sub-Saharan Africa. Reports of torture were difficult to corroborate because many prisoners were held incommunicado.

‘The reported methods of torture included: chaining prisoners to a wall for hours; clubbing; applying electric shock; applying corkscrews to the back; pouring lemon juice in open wounds; breaking fingers and allowing the joints to heal without medical care; suffocating with plastic bags; deprivation of food and water; hanging by the wrists; suspension from a pole inserted between the knees and elbows; cigarettes burns; threats of being attacked by dogs; and beating on the soles of the feet.'

"To believe all that would stop simply because of the signing of a piece of paper between the two governments is to insult our common sense. Some safeguards could be imposed – insisting that Libya first sign the First Protocol to the European Convention for the Prevention of Torture that would permit both regular and unannounced visits to detainees by independent human rights monitors belonging to the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture, or insisting that the returnees should have access to an independent lawyer.

"But there is no guarantee such measures would amount to much under such an authoritarian regime. Five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor who have languished in prison there for a number of years on trumped up charges of infecting children with the HIV virus can testify both to Libya's use of torture, and lack of respect for the rule of law."

Read MF Letter to Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights re Counter-terrorism policy.

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