UN Convention Against Torture: Discrepancies in Evidence Given to the Committee About the Use of Prohibited Interrogation Techniques in Iraq: Twenty-eighth Report of Session 2007-08 - Report, Together with Formal Minutes, Oral and Written Evidence

This report from the Joint Committee on Human Rights presents a follow-up to the Committee’s 2006 report The UN Convention Against Torture (UNCAT) (HL 185-I / HC 701-I) (ISBN 9780104008638). The 2006 report focused on the UN Convention Against Torture and its applicability to the UK armed forces. This new report considers discrepancies in the evidence provided to the Committee about the use of prohibited interrogation techniques in Iraq.The Committee’s conclusions are as follows: conditioning techniques - such as hooding and the use of stress positioning - were used by some British troops in Iraq, despite such techniques been prohibited in 1972; the hooding and stress positioning by the First Queen’s Lancashire Regiment in 2003 was based on legal advice from Brigade headquarters; the interpretation of using such techniques may have been too narrow and interpreted as only applying to interrogation in Northern Ireland; the prohibition of such techniques was not clearly articulated to the troops in Iraq; and, until 2005 interrogation personnel were trained in proscribed techniques, demonstrating what they might be subjected to if captured.The Committee is yet to receive an explanation from the Ministry of Defence for the discrepancies between the evidence given to the Joint Committee in 2004 and 2006 on the use of prohibited conditioning techniques and recommends that the Secretary of State for Defence should confirm that a detailed response will be received about the discrepancies, following the public inquiry into the death of Baha Mousa.