%0 Journal Article
%T Torture in Iraq and the United Kingdom¡¯s indirect responsibility under CAT
%A GA£¿LLE CARAYON
%J Essex Human Rights Review
%D 2007
%I Essex Human Rights Centre
%X The occurrence of torture has been widespread in Iraq since the invasion by the coalition in 2003.Back in 2005, preceding the Iraqi parliamentary elections, evidence emerged that the Iraqi InteriorMinistry was subjecting prisoners to torture and ill treatment. This article analyses State responsibilityin the context of the 2005 ¡®incident¡¯. It looks at the circumstances under which the United Kingdom,as part of the coalition, can be held accountable for acts of torture inflicted in Iraqi prisons by Iraqiofficers. The question throughout is not whether the UK is responsible directly for those acts oftorture but instead whether the UK have some form of residual responsibility for not preventing theoccurrence of torture in Iraq. Indeed, torture requires States to ¡®prevent acts of torture¡¯.The author focuses on responsibility under the Convention against Torture (CAT) to whichthe UK is a party, after a brief analysis of the status of the prohibition of torture under internationallaw. She then moves on the criteria under which the torture occurring in Iraq could be attributable tothe UK, as, for a state to be responsible, the act or omission must not only be in breach of aninternational obligation but must also be attributable to the state. To do so, the International DraftArticles on State Responsibility are applied to the situation in Iraq.Finally, this article underlines the circumstances under which the Convention against Torturecan be applied to the situation in Iraq, analysing the extraterritorial applicability of the conventionthrough the jurisprudence of other international and regional human rights and international lawmechanisms. The author asserts that as authority and control by a state over persons abroad can beestablished through the acts and omissions of its agents abroad, when some conditions are met theUK¡¯s obligations under CAT extend to the territory of Iraq. While recognizing that the UK¡¯sresponsibility for acts of torture by the Iraqi government would be hard to establish in the ¡®incident¡¯described, the author nevertheless points at circumstances under which the UK could engage itsinternational responsibility under CAT for torture occurring in Iraq.
%U http://projects.essex.ac.uk/ehrr/V4N2/carayon.pdf