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Failure on torture Failure on torture
(3 months later)
Today is the UN Day in Support of Victims of Torture. The British government should urgently be called to account for failing to protect this vulnerable group. The Home Office routinely holds torture survivors in immigration detention in breach of its own rules. Rule 35 should prevent this in all but exceptional cases, but a report by the charity Medical Justice – The Second Torture – found that this rule was flouted in 49 out of 50 cases. Two detainees were deported and tortured again in their countries. They managed to escape back to the UK but were detained again. Medical Justice doctors documented fresh torture scars alongside older ones. Last month the high court found that a group of torture survivors had been detained unlawfully and that rule 35 had failed them. But alarmingly, the Home Office has restricted rule 35 so that it only applies if the torture was "inflicted by a person or a public official acting in an official capacity, or with their consent or acquiescence". So for the purposes of Rule 35, if you were tortured by the Taliban, that wouldn't count.
Lord Avebury
Dr Jonathan Fluxman Medical Justice 		Today is the UN Day in Support of Victims of Torture. The British government should urgently be called to account for failing to protect this vulnerable group. The Home Office routinely holds torture survivors in immigration detention in breach of its own rules. Rule 35 should prevent this in all but exceptional cases, but a report by the charity Medical Justice – The Second Torture – found that this rule was flouted in 49 out of 50 cases. Two detainees were deported and tortured again in their countries. They managed to escape back to the UK but were detained again. Medical Justice doctors documented fresh torture scars alongside older ones. Last month the high court found that a group of torture survivors had been detained unlawfully and that rule 35 had failed them. But alarmingly, the Home Office has restricted rule 35 so that it only applies if the torture was "inflicted by a person or a public official acting in an official capacity, or with their consent or acquiescence". So for the purposes of Rule 35, if you were tortured by the Taliban, that wouldn't count.
Lord Avebury
Dr Jonathan Fluxman Medical Justice
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