Committee backs rights of torture victims

VICTIMS of torture should have the right to sue foreign governments for damages through British courts, a committee of MPs and peers has said.

The Joint Committee on Human Rights called on ministers to lift state immunity, rejecting government claims that the move would breach its international obligations.

The committee urged the Government to support a Bill being introduced in the Commons by Labour MP Andrew Dismore, who chairs the committee, which has been backed by a former lord chief justice.

Meanwhile, the head of MI6 Sir John Scarlett has insisted his officers were not complicit in the torture of terrorist suspects by overseas intelligence services.

In an interview for the BBC Radio 4 documentary, A Century in the Shadows, he said: “Our officers are as committed to the values and the human rights values of liberal democracy as anybody else.”

His comments were recorded before the latest controversy over the involvement of British intelligence officers in the questioning of suspects held in countries like Pakistan with long records of human rights abuses.

However, the mounting calls for an inquiry into the claims of British complicity in torture were dismissed by Kim Howells, chairman of the parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee which scrutinises the work of the intelligence agencies.

He said that his committee had found no evidence that the agencies, or any other government department, had colluded in the torture of detainees by foreign governments

“So I’m very worried that these calls for judicial inquiries and so on are really treating the intelligence agencies as guilty until proven innocent and that’s very, very dangerous for the security of this country,” he said.

Mr Dismore’s Torture (Damages) Bill was approved in the Lords last year but stalled in the Commons and is now being reintroduced in the upper chamber by former solicitor general Lord Archer of Sandwell.

Ministers have refused to accept the change, arguing it would breach a 2004 convention on state immunity, warning that any attempt to seize the property or assets of another country would be highly controversial and could potentially lead to retaliation.

However, in its report, the Human Rights Committee argued that international law was flexible enough to make the legal argument insufficient reason to retain the “unjust, outdated” ban.

It urged the Government to take an international lead by opening the door for claims and then address the practical concerns once they arose.