Sadly this is not the case. The public record shows that senior civil servants at the UK's permanent joint HQ were still debating in May 2004 whether to comply with the ban from the Heath government from 1972 on hooding and stressing. The head of Army Legal at the start of the war, Lt Col Nicholas Mercer, complained bitterly to all concerned about 40 Iraqis "kneeling in the sand, cuffed behind their backs, in the sun with bags over their head ...". From this point onwards, it was clear that agents of the UK state were routinely engaged in hooding and stressing in Iraq. There are two possible explanations as to why this was allowed to continue up to the end of the occupation. The first is that it was not thought that hooding and stressing in conditions of 60 degrees centigrade is within the legal definition of "torture" at all. The second is that it was and is the government's position that the UN convention against torture does not have extraterritorial effect.

What a sad state of affairs that we, as a nation, remain indifferent to what our senior civil servants and politicians sanctioned as policy in Iraq.

Phil Shiner

Public Interest Lawyers