Sonya Sceats - A message to supporters on the Trump visit
Torture is categorically wrong. It is ineffective, deeply unethical and rightly subject to an absolute global ban...
And it destroys lives, as we know well from the extraordinary work our therapists do every day to help survivors of torture rehabilitate following their ordeals.
So it is especially disturbing that President Trump brazenly promotes torture by claiming that it “absolutely works”. He has bragged: “I would bring back waterboarding, and I’d bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding.”
Trump's cheap words risk giving a green light to torturers everywhere. They make ever more urgent the prevention and accountability work of Freedom from Torture and the wider anti-torture movement.
In April he placed in charge of the CIA Gina Haspel - a woman accused of overseeing torture of detainees at a CIA “black site” in Thailand and then destroying the records of that abuse.
To watch a serving US President condone torture is devastating for survivors. Many think that Trump is suggesting that the cruelty inflicted on them is defensible. They see that he is standing with the perpetrators instead of survivors of torture.
Trump's cheap words risk giving a green light to torturers everywhere. They make ever more urgent the prevention and accountability work of Freedom from Torture and the wider anti-torture movement.
Ironically, Trump's visit to the UK coincides with major acknowledgements of our own recent history of complicity in torture by security partner including the US.
Our own intelligence agencies did everything they could to obstruct the parliamentary review. That’s why we and other human rights organisations have joined together to demand an independent, judge-led inquiry.
In May, we welcomed the British government offer a full apology to Abdel Hakim Belhaj and Fatima Boudchar for MI6 involvement in their kidnap and CIA rendition to Libya in 2004, leading to years of detention and torture for Mr Belhaj.
Only two weeks ago, we saw the publication by the parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee of a detailed account of British complicity in torture and abuse led by US intelligence agencies in the wake of 9/11.
So we now know that there were 13 incidents where British intelligence officers witnessed at first hand a detainee being mistreated by others, 25 where UK personnel were told by detainees they had been mistreated and 128 incidents of which they were informed of mistreatment by foreign intelligence officers.
In 232 cases UK agents continued to supply questions or intelligence to other services despite knowledge or suspicion of mistreatment, as well as 198 cases where UK personnel received information from foreign services which had been obtained from detainees who had been mistreated or suspected of mistreatment. The British state even offered to help fund three rendition flights to be conducted by other countries.
These are shocking figures but still there is much more we need to know to uncover the full extent of UK complicity in torture, the reasons for it and the lessons to be learned, for our own intelligence agencies did everything they could to obstruct the parliamentary review. That’s why we and other human rights organisations have joined together to demand an independent, judge-led inquiry.
Theresa May will be hosting President Trump on this visit. She must use the occasion to tell him unequivocally that torture failed before and will fail again.
She must tell him that the British intelligence and security agencies will never again stoop to complicity in US torture, however entwined our history and relationship may be.
And she must echo the sentiment of the government's recent apology to Mr Belhaj and Ms Boudchar by reminding him of the terrible human cost of torture.
Theresa May will be hosting President Trump on this visit. She must use the occasion to tell him unequivocally that torture failed before and will fail again.
On Friday 13 July I will be marching in London together with torture survivors, supporters and staff from Freedom from Torture, to protest President Trump’s visit. Therapists and other staff from our treatment centres in Glasgow, Manchester and Newcastle will be joining protests in those cities. We will be carrying banners and placards reading “No to Torture, No to Trump”. We will tell him in no uncertain terms that we reject his stance on torture.
