Author: Great Britain. Parliament. Joint Committee on Human Rights

Publisher: The Stationery Office

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 112

ISBN-13: 9780104013410

This report, from the joint House of Lords and House of Commons Committee (Joint Committee on Human Rights, HLP 156/HCP 527, session 2007-08, ISBN 9780104013410), is a follow-up to an earlier report, (HLP 185-I/HCP 701-I, session 2005-06, ISBN 9780104008638). This 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, were as follows: that 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; that the hooding and stress positioning by the First Queen's Lancashire Regiment in 2003, was based on legal advice from Brigade headquarters; that the interpretation of using such techniques may have been too narrow and interpreted as only applying to interrogation in Northern Ireland; that the prohibition of such techniques was not clearly articulated to the troops in Iraq; up 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 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 a detailed response will be received about the discrepancies, following the public inquiry into the death of Baha Mousa.