{"id":9374,"date":"2017-01-17T11:26:01","date_gmt":"2017-01-17T11:26:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reprieve.org.uk\/?post_type=update&p=9374"},"modified":"2020-05-29T15:17:37","modified_gmt":"2020-05-29T15:17:37","slug":"supreme-court-rules-uk-government-mi6-cia-torture-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/reprieve.org\/uk\/2017\/01\/17\/supreme-court-rules-uk-government-mi6-cia-torture-case\/","title":{"rendered":"Supreme Court rules against UK Government in MI6-CIA torture case"},"content":{"rendered":"

The UK Supreme Court has today unanimously rejected the government\u2019s attempts to prevent a case brought by victims of a British-American \u2018rendition\u2019 operation from being heard.<\/p>\n

All seven judges\u00a0ruled<\/a>\u00a0that a claim brought by an anti-Gaddafi dissident and his wife \u2013 who was pregnant when the couple were kidnapped, abused and forcibly transferred to a Libyan prison in 2004 \u2013 should be heard.\u00a0 Ministers had claimed that, because the operation was carried out jointly by MI6 and the CIA, it would be inappropriate for British courts to rule on activity which involved American officials \u2013 even if it involved kidnap, rendition and torture.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn 72 hours, a would-be torturer will take the reins of Earth\u2019s most powerful security state. So this case isn\u2019t \u2018just\u2019 about history \u2013 the stakes couldn\u2019t be higher.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cWe enter the Trump era with not a soul held to account for Britain\u2019s past role in rendition. No official has condemned Trump\u2019s torture boasts. Our intelligence agencies may well be pressured to help America torture again.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cThe government bought years of delay by wasting hundreds of thousands of pounds on this appeal, when a simple apology would have closed the case. Theresa May should apologise to this family, draw a line in the sand against torture, and restore British honour once and for all.\u201d
\nCori Crider, Reprieve lawyer for the rendition victims<\/strong><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Today\u2019s ruling comes just days before the inauguration of Donald Trump as President, who\u00a0promised<\/a>\u00a0on the campaign trail to revive the George W Bush-era torture programme, bringing back waterboarding \u201cand a hell of a lot worse.\u201d<\/p>\n

The rendition victims,\u00a0Fatima Boudchar and Abdul-Hakim Belhaj<\/a>, have offered to drop their claim in return for an apology and a token payment of \u00a31 from each of the defendants \u2013 the UK Government and its agencies; Jack Straw, who was Foreign Secretary at the time; and Sir Mark Allen, a senior MI6 official who took credit for the operation in correspondence sent to Gaddafi\u2019s spy chief Moussa Koussa. Sir Mark\u2019s correspondence came to light in the wake of the fall of Gaddafi in 2011.<\/p>\n

The UK Government has never acknowledged its role in the CIA\u2019s rendition programme under President Bush \u2013 despite significant evidence of that role already being in the public domain. Unlike the US \u2013 where President Obama has\u00a0admitted<\/a>\u00a0that \u201cwe tortured some folks,\u201d and the Senate has published parts of a major report into CIA torture \u2013 there has been no public accountability in the UK.<\/p>\n

In 2012, the British Government settled a\u00a0similar<\/a>\u00a0claim relating to the kidnap and rendition to Libya of a family including four children aged twelve and under, but has consistently refused to apologise.\u00a0 Ministers have instead spent hundreds of thousands of pounds in legal costs trying to prevent the Libyan rendition cases ever being heard \u2013 despite the victims in today\u2019s case having offered to settle in return for an apology.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The UK Supreme Court has today unanimously rejected the government\u2019s attempts to prevent a case brought by victims of a British-American \u2018rendition\u2019 operation from being heard. All seven judges\u00a0ruled\u00a0that a claim brought by an anti-Gaddafi dissident and his wife \u2013 who was pregnant when the couple were kidnapped, abused and forcibly transferred to a Libyan … <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-update"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nSupreme Court rules against UK Government in MI6-CIA torture case<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/reprieve.org\/uk\/2017\/01\/17\/supreme-court-rules-uk-government-mi6-cia-torture-case\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Supreme Court rules against UK Government in MI6-CIA torture case\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The UK Supreme Court has today unanimously rejected the government\u2019s attempts to prevent a case brought by victims of a British-American \u2018rendition\u2019 operation from being heard. 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