"The issue is one of constitutional principle, whether
evidence obtained by torturing another human being may lawfully be admitted
against a party to proceedings in a British court, irrespective of where, or
by whom, or on whose authority the torture was inflected," said Lord
Bingham, writing the lead opinion for the Law Lords, roughly equivalent to the
United States Supreme Court. "To that question I would give a very clear
negative answer."
The ruling dealt specifically with the case of 10 men who
were detained and held without charge in Britain on suspicion of being
terrorists after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. But while
the question at hand applied only to English law, several of the lords explicitly
referred - not at all flatteringly - to the standards
of evidence applied in the United States in the fight against terror.
Speaking of English national pride in its common-law
rejection centuries ago of torture as a means to an end, Lord Hoffman brought
his argument forward to the current era.
"In our own century," he wrote, "many people
in the United States, heirs to that common-law tradition, have felt their
country dishonored by its use of torture outside the jurisdiction and its
practice of extra-legal 'rendition' of suspects to countries where they would
be tortured."
Human-rights groups applauded the ruling as a landmark
decision that set out a civilized blueprint for how the courts of England
should conduct themselves in terror cases.
"The Law Lords' ruling has overturned the tacit belief
that torture can be condoned under certain circumstances," Amnesty
International said in a statement. "This ruling shred any vestige of
legality with which the U.K. government had attempted to defend a completely
unlawful and reprehensible policy, introduced as part of its counter-terrorism
measures."
It was unclear today what practical effect the ruling would
have. Human-rights groups who had brought the case said that it would force the
government to do three things: re-evaluate any pending or future terrorism
cases to determine explicitly that evidence had not been extracted by torture;
stop seeking to deport terror suspects to countries where they might be
tortured; and investigate the possible the use of British airspace and airports
by the United States in transporting terror suspects to countries where torture
may be used.
But in a statement, the British home secretary, Charles
Clarke, said that the ruling would have no substantive effect on the 10 terror
suspects whose cases were at issue. Nor, he said, would the lords' judgment
have any bearing on the government's anti-terrorism policies.
"The government has always made it clear that we do not
condone torture in any way, nor would we carry out this completely unacceptable
behavior or encourage others to do so," Mr. Clarke said.
The 10 men are known informally as the Belmarsh detainees,
after the prison where many of them were held. Last year, a lower court ruled
that evidence against them that may have been obtained under torture in other
countries was usable in English courts and that the government had no
obligation to ask how the evidence had been gathered.
In strong language that referred to centuries of English
law and also to the moral weight of international treaties and obligations,
a seven-member panel of the Law Lords struck down that decision.
"The principles of the common law, standing alone, in
my opinion compel the exclusion of third party torture evidence as unreliable,
unfair, offensive to ordinary standards of humanity and decency and
incompatible with the principles which should animate a tribunal seeking to
administer justice," Lord Bingham wrote.