Torture is a moral victory for the terrorists (Cypress Mail)

[struggle4progress]

... A number of British terrorism suspects who have been arrested in Pakistan at the request of UK authorities say their interrogation by Security Service officers, shortly after brutal torture at the hands of agents of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI), has convinced them that MI5 colluded in the mistreatment ...

The truth is that although they would never admit it, many politicians turn a blind eye to the fact that their counter-terrorism operatives operate under very different rules, where there is little room for the niceties of due legal process.

... is due process before the law not a basic plank of our democratic society? Is torture not a fundamental violation of human rights, declared to be unacceptable by Article 5 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights?

Fighting terrorism by terror may at times be tempting, but it is a moral victory for the terrorists. What’s more, not only does it undermine our values, its efficacy is seriously flawed. Even the most basic police brutality has been shown to extract false confessions, so how greater the likelihood in cases of torture, and how damaging the false leads in such a crucial struggle?

By definition outside the judicial process, torture is wide open to abuse. Such abuse is a godsend to the extremists. Rendition flights, Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib have served no purpose in the war on terror other than to fan the flames of hatred in the Middle East and to recruit thousands of young men to the extremist cause ...

http://www.cyprus-mail.com/news/main.php?id=38998&cat_id=1