Damaging effects of US disregard for the rule of law.

Speech by Baroness Sarah Ludford MEP delivered to BBC Radio 2 - The Jeremy Vine Show on Tue 6th Dec 2005

Jeremy Vine: Critics of the process of extraordinary rendition say suspects have been kept in CIA run jails or handed over to countries like Egypt and Syria where they are then tortured. One critic of the approach is Baroness Sarah Ludford, a Liberal Democrat MEP and member of the Civil Liberties Committee at the European Parliament. Baroness Ludford is in Belgrade, good afternoon to you. Did Ms Rice put your mind at rest yesterday?

Sarah Ludford: No, absolutely not. I thought it was a mixture of stonewalling and weasel-words. It was very carefully drafted. It said, for example, that "the US has not transported people for the purpose of interrogation using torture", or "where we believe they will be tortured." What she means is "we may have transported them turning a blind eye or washing our hands of what became of the people." What has happened is outsourcing - a lot of this has been outsourced to some very dodgy Middle Eastern regimes.

JV: But looking at her exact words they were quite clear. She said: "the US does not permit, tolerate or condone torture under any circumstances." So if they are sending people to let's say Egypt, and dropping them off there because they know they will be tortured in Egypt, then she's lying isn't she?

SL: Well, as I say, I think this has been carefully drafted, no doubt with a lawyer alongside. What that means in 'legalese' is that you would have to show that the United States knew for certain that they were going to be tortured. I think it leaves room for the US administration to turn around and say "oh good heavens, we didn't realise when we took someone to Egypt or Syria that they would be tortured," whereas everybody knows and it is well documented that torture, unfortunately, is routine in those countries. She is trying to duck and weave over this, and I am not satisfied at all.

JV: But at least from what she said, you don't think the CIA themselves are giving these people electric shocks or whatever it is they are doing. You think they're dropping them off with a third party and letting them get on with it?

SL: Well I don't know, and I should continue to stress that what we lack is the evidence, which is why the European Parliament and parliaments at national and other levels are trying to insist that we need to have proper investigations into the facts. It may well be that the CIA themselves are doing these things, because after all the Bush administration is threatening to veto a law that the US congress is trying to pass which would ban torture of US detainees. Bush wants the CIA exempted from that, which has led his Vice-President Cheney to be labelled by one US newspaper as "Vice-President for torture." If they can honestly say that the CIA would never torture anybody, why do they want the CIA to be exempted from a torture ban?! It doesn't add up I'm afraid, which is why the US administration is wriggling on this. Of course they are also saying, when they have respected the sovereignty of other countries, that we should look to our own European governments for answers on this, that they must have been complicit, certainly in these flights. You have to have official permission to use the airports and airspace of other countries. Rice also said 'we have not used airports or airspace without permission.' The flight logs of these aircraft are published in US and European air traffic control records, so we know the flights took place. According to the BBC we are talking of about 700 flights. We need to know exactly who was on those flights, where did they go, where are they now what's happened to them. Have they disappeared into a black hole?

Sometimes the information that you get from people who have been maltreated or tortured is extremely unreliable. One can understand that they will perhaps say anything to stop the torture, so you can't necessarily rely on that information.

I don't like the term "war on terror," but if we are fighting a campaign to uphold the values of the West against the violence, and the lack of values of the terrorists, surely our unique selling point is that we uphold democracy, human rights and the rule of law. Otherwise, what is our answer to Osama bin Laden? Why don't we just say "ok, we will toss aside our freedoms, you've won."?

JV: The US say they can't have a process whereby they apply for extradition of suspects to countries like Pakistan because of all the security issues there. Do you agree with that?

SL: No I don't. I think there can be very, very specialized conditions where there isn't an extradition agreement with the country. Maybe in the immediate turmoil in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban there might have been a very limited argument for saying that they couldn't be put on trial there so they could be transported somewhere else, into a justice system that would try them fairly. Always the objective has to be, under international law, to put someone on trial. We want prosecutions, we want convictions. But outside those very limited circumstances, there are extradition agreements, there are legal controls, and those are the ones that should apply. Could I just mention that as MEP for London I have several constituents who are legal residents in the UK but are not passport holders. They are still in Guantánamo Bay, we know they're there, and one of them was actually kidnapped while on a business trip to the Gambia, so this is close to home.

I think that the loss of moral authority that America is creating for itself is very sad. One of the reasons I am in Belgrade is that I am on the European Parliament's Balkans delegation and we are saying to the Serbian authorities and MPs "you must deliver your indicted war crimes suspects to the Hague Tribunal." The EU and the US are essentially saying to them "you must obey the rule of law." So what credibility does the United States have if it is not obeying the rule of law itself? It is hypocritical, and it just undermines America's credibility in the world. I think America is split. There are those who support the Bush administration, but I think there are millions and millions of Americans who support and subscribe to the values of the US constitution.

The ban on torture is absolute. It is one of the few absolutes in international law, because of course you can't have a little bit of torture - you either torture people or you don't. I think this is sending out the wrong message to every authoritarian regime in the world. We are already weakened in saying to Uzbekistan, where there was a demonstration earlier this year where hundreds of people were shot and both the EU and the US were very slow to condemn it. Already we can see in our foreign relations that our credibility in applying pressure is lessened because of this, and I think the Bush administration got itself into a terrible mess in Guantánamo, and they don't know how to get out of it. We must help them to get out of it.

To listen to the interview in full please go to: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio2/shows/vine/