Sir, As someone who has accumulated much experience of the behaviour of national law-enforcement officers overseas in extracting confessions from Britons through torture, may I offer a suggestion of a way forward?
Fair Trials Abroad has been involved in a number of Saudi cases, including some of the plaintiffs in the House of Lords application (report and law report, June 15). The Saudis are certainly not alone in the routine use of physical and mental brutality. The latest example of Britons subject to such abuse were the “Egyptian Three” Reza Pankhurst, Maajid Nawaz and Ian Nisbet. They returned to the UK last month after suffering severe torture in the initial stages of their interrogation. Their legal claim against the Egyptian authorities falls with the House of Lords decision. We also have had a small number of cases over the years throughout the Middle East, including the atrocious male rape of a British juvenile in the Yemen.
It seems to me that underlying the state of international and national law as expounded by Lord Bingham is a conflict between the protection of our citizens overseas against torture and the realpolitik of interstate relations. This conflict is unlikely to be resolved by the international community in the near future.
However, in the last analysis British victims of torture are victims of state-sanctioned crime and our Government’s inability to protect its citizens from it. Putting the problem in such terms points to a solution for their compensation. The criminal injuries compensation scheme provides for the victims of criminals. Could we not have such a scheme for the victims of this type of criminal activity by officials overseas?
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STEPHEN JAKOBI
Ham, Surrey