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Conclusion

The British government’s efforts to forcibly remove terrorism suspects in reliance on assurances against torture and ill-treatment have not, to date, been successful. And its advocacy efforts at the European Union to develop the use of diplomatic assurances as standard practice have failed. In important ways, therefore, the government’s plans to enshrine these bilateral agreements in law and policy have been thwarted.

Still, with two crucial rulings pending in the House of Lords, legal protections against abusive returns are not yet secure. There are, moreover, broader moral, political, and national security reasons to be concerned about the UK’s promotion of diplomatic assurances against torture.

The British government promotes itself as a leader in the global effort to eradicate torture.⁶⁸ The government has funded international anti-torture projects, and paid for publications like The Torture Reporting Handbook—a practical guide to identifying, documenting, and reporting incidents of torture for doctors, lawyers, and human rights activists.⁶⁹ The UK was also one of the first states to ratify the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture, which creates parallel international and domestic monitoring systems aimed at reducing torture and ill-treatment in detention, and has been active in pressing other governments to do the same.

All this deserves praise. But the government’s relentless campaign to see “deportations with assurances” accepted throughout Europe reflects a more ambivalent attitude toward torture. That ambivalence sends the wrong message at a time when torture protection has been under assault in many parts of the world.

Tolerating torture undermines the moral legitimacy of the British government around the world. The abandonment by powerful governments of international rules—as we have repeatedly seen in the past few years—gives encouragement to others who believe that they, too, need not be bound by the universal rules of humanity. It is no surprise that the British government has attracted some unsavory allies in its attempts to legitimize diplomatic assurances.

Taking a page from UK policy on assurances, the Russian authorities have attempted to extradite refugees to Uzbekistan in reliance on assurances of humane treatment from Tashkent, a government that practices torture systematically. The Ismoilov case, noted above, represents a victory at the European Court of Human Rights against Russian efforts. Similarly aligning themselves to the UK approach on assurances, the Kyrgyz authorities, however, had already extradited four Uzbek refugees in August 2006 in reliance on diplomatic assurances against torture by the time the men’s cases got to the UN Human Rights Committee. Although the committee found that Kyrgyzstan had violated article 3 for putting the men at risk of torture, setting that legal precedent after the fact was of no material impact on the risk the men faced due to their pre-emptive transfers.⁷⁰

Perhaps more surprising is a Danish initiative to explore the possibility of employing diplomatic assurances for national security-related transfers, and attempts in recent years by the Italian, Spanish, and Swiss governments to actually employ diplomatic assurances.⁷¹ These governments have at various times unequivocally supported global efforts to eradicate torture. For them to employ unreliable diplomatic assurances to legitimize deportations and extraditions gravely undermines those anti-torture efforts.

The British government’s “deportation with assurances” policy is also counter-productive at home. Since the July 2005 attacks on London, preventing radicalization and recruitment (the “prevent” strand) has been at the heart of the UK’s counterterrorism strategy.⁷² The strategy states that one of the key elements of prevention is engaging in the battle of ideas—challenging the ideologies that extremists believe justify the use of violence, primarily by helping Muslims who wish to dispute these ideas to do so. Whatever the alleged benefit of counterterrorism measures that violate human rights,⁷³ it is clear they undermine the UK’s moral legitimacy at home and abroad, damaging its ability to win the battle of ideas that is central to long-term success in combating terrorism.

The most recent criticism of UK policy and practice comes from the Council of Europe human rights commissioner, who visited the UK in early 2008. In a September 2008 report, the commissioner stated categorically that he strongly opposes the forced return of aliens from the UK on the basis of diplomatic assurances. He emphasized that such assurances “are usually sought from countries with long-standing, proven records of torture,” and he stressed that “the weakness inherent in the practice of diplomatic assurances lies in the fact that where there is a need for such assurances, there is clearly an acknowledged, real risk of torture and ill-treatment.” Such assurances, he concluded, “should never be relied on, where torture or ill-treatment is condoned by the Governments and is widely practised.”⁷⁴

Human Rights Watch calls on the British government to heed that call. We urge the government to halt immediately the practice of seeking unreliable assurances against ill-treatment from governments prone to perpetrating such abuse, and to hold perpetrators accountable rather than partner with them.