11 Jul 2007

Liberty's response to the Government’s involvement in the Saadi v Italy case in the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights which will challenge the right not to be sent to a place of torture.

Shami Chakrabarti, Director of Liberty, said:

“Democrats don’t do torture. It is the practice of tyrants and terrorists. If deportation to torture were permissible, extraordinary rendition would get the green light as well.

The new Home Secretary should forget her predecessors’ obsession with putting terror suspects on aeroplanes and concentrate on convicting and imprisoning them instead”

Liberty Press Office: 020 7378 3656 or 079 7383 1128

NOTES TO EDITORS

Under international conventions the UK government cannot send people back to a country where they might face torture, mistreatment or the death penalty. The Blair government previously announced a number of memoranda with regimes such as that of Colonel Gaddafi in Libya in an attempt to circumvent this protection.

The Government intervention in the case will attempt to water down the absolute prohibition against torture into a more qualified right.