MF joins calls for urgent public inquiry into UK Government

The Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture (now Freedom from Torture) has joined calls for an urgent public inquiry into a growing body of evidence that suggests UK authorities have played a role in the torture of terror suspects over the past eight years. 

According to the latest revelations in a highly critical UN report, UK intelligence personnel are alleged to have conducted or witnessed more than 2,000 interviews in Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay and Iraq.

The report comes days after it was revealed that MI5 may have directly played a part in the interrogation of Binyam Mohamed, who was recently released to the UK after seven years detention in Morocco, Afghanistan and then Guantánamo Bay.

"We work with thousands of survivors from around the world whom justice eludes because of the secrecy maintained by those responsible for their torture," said a spokesperson for the MF.

"Our own Government now stands accused of concealing evidence that would seriously undermine its noble declarations to date of observing the absolute ban on torture.

"It is not enough for the Government to say that it condemns torture when mounting evidence suggests otherwise. An inquiry is now a matter of urgency, both in the interests of those who are victims of the alleged abuses, and in the interests of thousands of other survivors for whom public scrutiny can be one of the most powerful vindications of an otherwise hidden ordeal."

In his report to the Human Rights Council, UN Special Rapporteur Martin Scheinin said that the US had only been able to render terror suspects to foreign jails where they faced interrogation and torture because of the co-operation of countries including the UK.