Blair defends the torturers
It is reported that when Blair told Bush that his Attorney General had been advised that the upcoming war in Iraq was illegal, that Bush told him, "Get new advice."
At this point Goldman turned to Christopher Greenwood QC. Possibly the only international lawyer in the UK to support the legality of an invasion without a second resolution.
Now Blair finds himself relying on Mr Greenwood's sound legal mind once again, this time to argue that foreigners who torture British subjects should be immune from prosecution in British courts.
I know. You couldn't make this up.
Saudi Arabia is appealing to the House of Lords against a court of appeal ruling that, while the state is immune from compensation claims for torture, individual officials who inflict it are not. Civil rights lawyers said the ruling in October 2004 was a historic victory, ending immunity for torturers abroad from claims in the English courts.
The UK government's intervention, backing the Saudi claim for immunity, follows a House of Lords case last year in which lawyers for the government contended that evidence obtained from torture abroad should be admissible as evidence in UK courts - an argument rejected by the law lords. "The thing we're quite angry about is that the government has weighed in to support the argument that the individual torturers should not be responsible. They have actually intervened formally and put in an argument in support of the Saudi government's argument that the individual torturers should continue to have immunity," said Tamsin Allen of Bindman & Partners, the law firm representing three of the men.
"We've been trying to pressurise the government not to do that because we say the inevitable conclusion is that they are supporting the right of torturers to continue to torture with impunity. We've got a court of appeal judgment saying that torturers should bear individual responsibility and we should be able to sue them in these courts and provide redress for torture victims, and they're arguing no ...
"Their argument is that state immunity is so important it has to be protected. We say there's no challenge to state immunity and it's not being undermined. The Americans have specific laws to allow torture victims to sue wherever the torture happened. We don't, and the government is trying to argue against the court of appeal judgment that established those rights."
So, there we have it. Not only does the Blair administration want to use evidence obtained by torture in British courts, it is now actively seeking to protect the rights of the torturers to be immune from prosecution. Even when those being tortured are British citizens.
It's very hard to square any of this to the halcyon days after Labour's election when we were naive enough to talk of such things as an ethical Foreign policy.
There is nothing ethical about using confessions extracted by torture in British courts, and it is unethical in the extreme to argue that torturers should not be prosecuted for their crimes.
And yet that, today, is the official position of the British government.
Blair often argues that bin Laden wants to undermine our values and change our way of life. I would offer the counter-argument that bin Laden needn't bother.
Blair has done it for him.
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