A coalition of 14 legal, human rights, and anti-torture organizations is intervening in one of the most important cases to reach Britain's highest court, the House of Lords. The case, which started yesterday, was to be heard by a panel of seven judges instead of the usual five, and will be watched by governments around the globe.
The resultant ruling -- whether or not evidence obtained abroad from third parties who may have been tortured is admissible in domestic courts -- is "likely to have profound implications for the worldwide ban on torture," according to the non-governmental organization Human Rights Watch, one of the interveners.
The judges will hear an appeal against a 2-1 decision by the appeal court of England and Wales last year that the British government was entitled to rely on such evidence in special terrorism cases, as long as Britain "neither procured nor connived at" the torture.
"When it comes to torture, the rules of the game must not change," said Holly Cartner, a spokeswoman for the US-based Human Rights Watch.
Under the UN Convention Against Torture, to which 140 states including Britain are party, evidence obtained under torture is inadmissible in any court proceedings. But the appeal court held that, because the convention is not part of UK law, the courts did not have to exclude such evidence. The House of Lords ruling, expected by the end of the year, could have an impact on Britain's attempts to return terrorist suspects to countries with poor human rights records such as Jordan and Algeria .
The lords' appeal is by 10 foreign nationals, mainly Algerians, subjected to indefinite detention without trial in the high-security Belmarsh prison, south London, and elsewhere before the House of Lords ruled the regime unlawful last December.
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