UK court says Taliban detainees at risk of torture, but rejects bid to stop prisoner transfers
By APFriday, June 25, 2010
UK court rejects halt to Afghan prisoner transfers
LONDON — A British court said Friday that suspected Taliban captives face the risk of mistreatment in a Kabul jail, but rejected an attempt to ban British troops from handing them over to Afghan security forces.
Anti-war activist Maya Evans asked the High Court to forbid British troops from transferring detainees to Afghanistan’s National Directorate for Security. Her lawyers said prisoners had suffered abuse including beatings, electrocution and sleep deprivation.
Judges Stephen Richards and Ross Cranston rejected Evans’ suit, but said an existing ban on sending prisoners to the directorate’s Kabul facility should continue because “there is a real risk that detainees transferred to NDS Kabul will be subjected to torture or serious mistreatment.”
They said prisoners could be sent to Afghan-run prisons in Kandahar and Lashkar Gah in southern Afghanistan as long as conditions were monitored.
The judges said isolated examples of abuse at those facilities “are possible, but the operation of the monitoring system — including observance of the specified conditions — will be sufficient to guard against abuse on such a scale as to give rise to a real risk of torture or serious mistreatment.”
The judges called the ruling “a partial victory” for Evans, who said she was pleased with the outcome.
“Transfers to Kabul have stopped as a result of this case and transfers to Kandahar and Lashkar Gah are now subject to conditions,” she said.
The British government also said it was satisfied.
“I am pleased that today’s High Court judgment rules that U.K. forces can lawfully continue to transfer U.K.-captured insurgents to sovereign Afghan authorities,” said Defense Secretary Liam Fox.
He said safeguards against abuse of detainees “will be reinforced in line with the court’s recommendations.”
The court challenge was the latest example of concerns expressed by activists around the world about how captured militants have been treated at prisons such as Abu Graib in Iraq and secretive holding tanks at the U.S. Bagram Air Field in Afghanistan.
