Torture cases question UK democracy

[islamirama]

A collection of torture cases linked to the British government has created a crisis of credibility for a nation claiming to be a "democracy."

The UK is today accused of involvement in a catalogue of serious human rights violations since the September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center buildings in New York.

At the end of March, Amnesty International published a report saying there is "credible evidence" that Britain is implicated in torture, unlawful detentions, rendition, the concealment of victims' complaints and a failure to disclose evidence of torture.

The ****ing report followed allegations of UK intelligence agencies' complicity with their US counterparts in the harsh mistreatment of prisoners overseas.

In an interview with Press TV, Moazzam Begg, a former detainee at Guantanamo has confirmed the claims.

In a shocking report, Begg revealed that many of the Guantanamo prisoners, who were said by Washington to have committed suicide, were actually murdered.

He also said that sometimes prisoners were brutally mistreated in front of other inmates, which is "far worse then being tortured yourself."

Begg who was held at Bagram prison in Afghanistan for a year and was later send to Guantanamo for three years, added that "the British intelligence services were present at every stage of my *incarceration and knew what was happening to me and to many other British prisoners."

Binyam Mohamed, another British resident formerly held at Guantanamo Bay, has also revealed that he was subjected to torture while in US custody and that British authorities knew about it.

On February, the government lost a legal battle to Mohamed to prevent the disclosure of intelligence about UK complicity in the tortures.

However despite that, a court hearing which is set to look into allegations of government misconduct against several former Guantanamo Bay detainees, is to be held behind closed doors.

The government's attempt to conceal intelligence from the public is seen as a failure of democracy in Britain.

The United Kingdom which is a so-called advocate of democracy in the world is now -- along with the United Sates -- considered a major sponsor of torture.

This is while according to the 1950 Geneva Convention, the degradation and humiliation of war prisoners is prohibited.

PressTV