British government misses own torture inquiry deadline
Ministers under pressure to launch judge-led inquiry into UK role in post-9/11 abuses
The British government is coming under pressure after failing to meet its own deadline to decide whether to hold a judge-led inquiry into the UK’s involvement in post-9/11 human rights abuses.
Three months ago Theresa May offered an apology for MI6’s role in the kidnap and torture of a Libyan dissident and his wife in 2004.
The following month, after a four-year investigation, Westminster’s intelligence and security committee reported that UK intelligence officers had been involved in human rights abuses on hundreds of occasions, but complained that May had prevented key witnesses from giving evidence.
Foreign Office minister Alan Duncan subsequently told MPs that the government would decide within 60 days whether or not to hold an inquiry led by a judge – a deadline that passed last Monday.
Some government lawyers are understood to be concerned that human rights abuses that took place within the context of an international armed conflict could have amounted to war crimes, and that if the UK does not thoroughly investigate, the international criminal court in The Hague could step in.
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