Alarm as government rewrites UK 'torture guidance' in secret
A British government guidance paper that is intended to prevent the country’s intelligence officers from becoming involved in human rights abuses is being rewritten in secret, much to the alarm of civil liberties groups.
Rights activists are deeply worried that the UK government may be tempted to water down the guidance at a time when the US president, Donald Trump, has said he hopes to restore waterboarding – “and a hell of a lot worse” – and has nominated Gina Haspel as the next head of the CIA. Haspel reportedly oversaw a secret CIA prison in Thailand, where a terrorism suspect was tortured.
The UK paper, known in Whitehall as the ”consolidated guidance”, was rewritten and made public by the coalition government following a series of scandals in the years following the 9/11 attack on the twin towers in New York.
Under the terms of the previous version, drawn up early in 2002, MI6 officers had helped to plan a number of so-called rendition operations. Officers from MI5 and MI6 had also become embroiled in the torture of detainees held overseas, usually by handing questions to overseas intelligence agencies with poor human rights records.
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