Wednesday 10 June 2009

Another WTF moment brought to you by the Met Police

Never content to be left out of illegal torture scandal (not that they were), the UK has been accused of waterboarding suspects in police custody.

Metropolitan Police officers subjected suspects to waterboarding, according to allegations at the centre of a major anti-corruption inquiry, The Times has learnt.

The torture claims are part of a wide-ranging investigation which also includes accusations that officers fabricated evidence and stole suspects’ property. It has already led to the abandonment of a drug trial and the suspension of several police officers.

And what was the time-sensitive, immediately dangerous activity that may have warranted (as one theory - not mine - goes) such extreme, atrocious measures?

Police said they found a large amount of cannabis and the suspects were charged with importation of a Class C drug.

Well there's your ticking clock right there.

Other reports call the 'methods' used 'water-based torture', including pushing suspects' heads into buckets of water. But however you term it, according to the accounts given, it is torture and it is illegal. And with the UK's record on human rights not exactly clear, it perhaps comes as no surprise that the line between aiding in the torture of terrorist suspects in far-flung locations and torturing UK criminal suspects has started to break down.

1 comment:

  1. I despair.

    It seems so far away from my London childhood with the nice police officer coming to talk to the class about road safety.

    *sad face*

    ReplyDelete

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