Ex-Envoy: British Used Intel After
Torture
Yahoo News/AP
By SUE LEEMAN, Associated Press Writer
December 31, 2005
LONDON - A former British ambassador has published government documents he
says prove that Britain knowingly received intelligence extracted under torture
from prisoners in Uzbekistan.
Craig Murray, who was removed as ambassador to Uzbekistan after going public
about his concerns, defied a Foreign Office ban to publish the internal memos
on his Web site Friday. The documents include memos to Foreign Office chiefs in
which Murray expressed his concern over the use of "torture material."
In one memo, Murray said he was told by Foreign Office legal adviser Sir
Michael Wood that it was not illegal to use information acquired by torture,
except in legal proceedings. Intelligence officer Matthew Kydd had also told
him the intelligence services sometimes found such material "very useful
indeed, with a direct bearing on the war on terror," he said.
Murray said that even after he alerted his bosses to his concerns, they
continued to use material allegedly gained under torture "on the grounds that
the UK could not prove that individual detainees were tortured to extract
information."
"I have dealt with hundreds of individual cases of political or religious
prisoners in Uzbekistan, and I have met with very few where torture, as defined
in the U.N. convention, was not employed," he wrote.
A Foreign Office spokesman said Friday that while Britain condemns the use
of torture, it would be "irresponsible" for the intelligence services to reject
out of hand information which might protect British citizens from a terror
attack. The spokesman spoke on condition of anonymity in keeping with
government policy.
Uzbekistan has put more than 6,000 political prisoners in squalid jails
where dozens of people have reportedly died of torture over the past several
years, according to rights groups.
But the central Asian country emerged as a key U.S. ally after the Sept. 11
attacks in the United States, and had hosted hundreds of American troops
supporting operations in neighboring Afghanistan until last month.
Hard-line President Islam Karimov had ordered the U.S. troops to leave in
July after Washington joined international condemnation of a bloody government
crackdown in the eastern city of Andijan that human rights groups say killed
hundreds of civilians.
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