I. Background

Torture and related abuses in Pakistan

Pakistan has a long and well-documented history of torture, arbitrary arrests and detention, enforced disappearances, and other human rights violations by government security forces and intelligence agencies. These practices are systematic and routine, whether used in ordinary criminal matters to obtain confessions or information, against political and ideological opponents, or in more sensitive intelligence and counterterrorism cases.

Nonetheless, a key question that has come up regarding possible UK complicity in torture in Pakistan is what the UK government and its intelligence and law enforcement agencies knew about the practice of torture in Pakistan, and when they knew it. Judges in criminal trials of terror suspects in the UK have received expert testimony, in some cases from Human Rights Watch, to determine the extent of torture in Pakistan. In discussions about the role of British officials in terror investigations in Pakistan, some British officials have suggested to Human Rights Watch that the regular practice of torture in Pakistan was unproven or that they did not know that torture was routine and systematic in Pakistan.

Pakistani and international human rights groups, lawyers, the media, the US State Department, and the United Nations have long documented torture, arbitrary arrests and detention, enforced disappearances, and other human rights abuses by Pakistani government security forces and intelligence agencies. For example, Pakistani and international nongovernmental organizations have for many years documented the arbitrary detention and torture of detainees. According to the nongovernmental Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), the country's leading human rights organization:

The use of torture by state agents continues to be endemic despite Islamabad's signing of the Convention against Torture and this situation must end... Also, in the absence of proper investigation techniques in the country, those tasked with investigation of crime rely almost exclusively on torture to extract confessions.[1]

Most acts of torture in Pakistan are aimed at producing a confession during the course of a criminal investigation. However, torture by military and intelligence agencies often are intended as punishment. Torture often follows illegal abductions or "disappearances" by the ISI, other intelligence agencies, or the military.[2]

Torture is often used to frighten the detainee into compliance. If the detainee is released, it is usually on the understanding that if he fails to do what is demanded or expected of him, a further abduction and torture will follow. In this manner, the victim of custodial abuse can be kept in a state of fear often for several years. Most often, the threat of torture is enough to ensure compliance to the demands of the intelligence agencies. Even a phone call from an intelligence operative can achieve the required result for the intelligence services.[3]

Neither high social standing nor public profile has deterred the ISI or other state agencies from perpetrating torture if they deem it in the interest of "national security." The relative anonymity of a victim only simplifies matters for the responsible authorities. Human Rights Watch has documented numerous cases of torture in Pakistan.[4] The two cases below are illustrative of high profile cases of torture that would have been known to UK diplomats in Pakistan and officials covering Pakistan in the Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO).

Rana Sanaullah

Rana Sanaullah has been a prominent politician and the law minister in the Punjab provincial government since the resumption of civilian rule in 2008. In November 1999, police arrested Sanaullah, then in opposition, under the sedition law for criticizing the military government. According to Sanaullah, he was whipped, beaten, held incommunicado, and interrogated for a week in police custody before being released on bail.[5] 

In October 2002, Sanaullah was re-elected to the Punjab Provincial Assembly and elected deputy leader of the opposition. On March 8, 2003, heavily armed men, some of whom wore police uniforms, abducted him. Sanaullah told Human Rights Watch:

I was handcuffed and, with my face covered with a cloth, I was driven to the ISI office where I was tortured for three or four hours. They were using some sharp-edged weapon with which they would cut open my skin and then rub some sort of chemical in the wound. I felt as if I was on fire every time they did that. I have 22 such injuries on my body. Later, I was pushed into a car and thrown on a service lane along the motorway some 20 kilometers from Faisalabad.[6]

Sanaullah explained that after his first arrest he remained under pressure from the government and continued to receive sporadic threats until he himself returned to government, almost a decade later.[7]

Sanaullah's case was widely reported in the Pakistani media at the time of the incident in 2003.[8]

Ejaz Rabbani

Ejaz Rabbani, a taxi driver based in Rawalpindi, alleges he was tortured by the ISI for three days in March 2004. Rabbani believes he was picked up by the ISI because Salahuddin Amin, a British terrorism suspect wanted for planning attacks in London the same year (see section II below), had hired Rabbani's taxi on multiple occasions. While there is no evidence of active British collusion in Rabbani's treatment, MI5 and the Metropolitan Police reportedly pressed the ISI to locate Amin. Human Rights Watch received confirmation from both Pakistani and British officials that Rabbani was being held in order to locate Amin.

Rabbani told Human Rights Watch that men in plain clothes dragged him off the street and drove him to a police station in Rawalpindi where he was hooded and handcuffed, and his feet shackled.

I was completely terrified. I was sweating heavily and I had difficulty breathing. I was shivering with fear... They put me in a car, drove me a little way and took me down some stairs. After a little while a few people came in-I don't know how many-and started beating me. They didn't say anything to me or ask me any questions, they just swore at me and then started beating me...

I was crying and asking them who they were, why they were beating me, and what they wanted from me. They didn't say anything. They just kept beating me. They were hitting my back, my arms, my legs, and the soles of my feet.

Eventually they stopped beating me and one of them said: 'Where's Salahuddin?' When I told them I had dropped him off at a petrol station, they started beating me again. One of them said, 'Let's drill a hole in his side,' and I could hear an electric drill being switched on. It was placed against my side and I could feel my shirt being twisted and torn by it. Then they threatened to cut off my leg with an angle grinder, and I could hear the angle grinder being started up. This went on for three days.

Rabbani's mistreatment only ended after Amin had been located by his family and handed over to the ISI. However, he remained in detention for a further eight days.

I was kept in a pitch-black cell, about six-feet long and four wide. I could hear other people crying.... During this time I received treatment for a stomach problem but the doctor refused to examine me for the torture and provide relief for my wounds and bruises.[9]

Rabbani is currently in the UK seeking asylum as he fears he will be mistreated again if he returns to Pakistan.

Official UK and US reporting on human rights in Pakistan

Official British reporting on the human rights situation in Pakistan has been selective and sporadic. In 2000, the year following General Pervez Musharraf's seizure of power, the FCO's Annual Human Rights Report stated that:

Pakistan has a chequered human rights history that precedes the military coup. Reports of extra-judicial killings, the abuse of the blasphemy law, harassment of the free press and NGOs, religious persecution, particularly against Christians, Ahmadis and Hindus, 'honour killings' of women and girls, child and bonded labour and discrimination against women have persisted. British ministers and officials have regularly raised our concerns with the Pakistani authorities. Too often, however, there has been a difference between commitments to take action to address human rights problems and action on the ground.[10]

The report adds:

Since the coup in October last year [1999] we have monitored the human rights situation in Pakistan carefully. We have been particularly concerned about the treatment of detainees...[11]

However, oddly, given the scale of authoritative reporting from other organizations, the report does not mention the subject of torture.

After September 11, 2001, the Musharraf regime went from pariah to ally-and FCO public reporting on human rights violations in Pakistan dried up. Pakistan did not figure again as a country of concern or otherwise in any detail until the publication of the 2007 report, produced in the aftermath of then President Pervez Musharraf's imposition of a state of emergency (effectively a second coup) and the assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto. The FCO's 2006 Human Rights Report was criticized by the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee (FAC) for its failure to include Pakistan as a country of concern.

We conclude that, despite welcome improvements in women's rights and legal reforms, the serious nature of human rights abuses in Pakistan and the importance of establishing a culture of human rights in the country mean that Pakistan warrants inclusion as a country of concern in the Annual Human Rights Report 2007.[12]

But even in 2007, the FCO report says little beyond expressing general "concern" about the human rights situation in the country, even though rights abuses were rampant. The report did, however, emphasize continuing cooperation on counterterrorism:

Pakistan is one of our most important partners in our counter-terrorism efforts. Pakistan and the UK work closely together at all levels, including through regular political contact and operational co-operation.... The UK has offered Pakistan full support in countering terrorism, including exchanges on forensic training, investigating the financing of terrorism and the sharing of crisis management expertise.... When assisting other countries to develop their counter-terrorism capability, we ensure that our training and wider assistance promote human rights compliance, based on international human rights standards.[13]

The 2008 report follows the same pattern and mentions neither torture nor illegal detention.[14] This is a shocking omission given the prevalence of torture in Pakistan and the UK's claimed commitment to eradicating torture globally.

Nevertheless, for authoritative reporting on torture in Pakistan by a close ally with a similar strategic interest in combating terrorism, the UK authorities would have needed to look no further than to the annual human rights reports of the US State Department, another post 9/11 ally of Pakistan. The US State Department has regularly documented the use of torture by the Pakistani authorities (though this has not stopped the US government from working closely with the ISI). For instance, the 2008 State Department human rights country report on Pakistan states that:

[S]ecurity forces, including intelligence services, tortured and abused individuals in custody. Under provisions of the Anti-Terrorism Act, coerced confessions are admissible in antiterrorism courts... Alleged torture occasionally resulted in death or serious injury. Human rights organizations reported methods including beating with batons and whips, burning with cigarettes, whipping soles of the feet, prolonged isolation, electric shock, denial of food or sleep, hanging upside down, and forced spreading of the legs with bar fetters. Security force personnel reportedly raped women during interrogations. The government rarely took action against those responsible.[15]

There were similar entries in the annual US State Department reports covering 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2004, all of which predated the counter-terror cooperation with the UK discussed in this report.