This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Human rights groups have demanded that Theresa May launch a government-wide search for missing papers that they say could provide evidence of human rights violations.

As Labour called for an investigation into the Guardian revelations and said that the error risked fuelling accusations of a cover-up, Amnesty International and Reprieve said that procedures had to become more open.

The Guardian reported on Tuesday that thousands of government papers concerning the Troubles, the Falklands war and the Zinoviev letter – in which MI6 officers plotted the downfall of the first Labour government – are all said to have been lost after they were removed from the National Archives.

The British people deserve to know what the government has done in their name Labour MP Jon Trickett

The government admitted losing the files, with both the Home Office and the Foreign Office (FCO) unable to explain why certain files were taken or whether any copies had been made.

Labour MP Jon Trickett, the shadow Cabinet Office minister, led criticism of the government for removing the files and then reporting them as lost.

“The ‘loss’ of documents about controversial periods in history is unacceptable,” he said. “The British people deserve to know what the government has done in their name and their loss will only fuel accusations of a cover-up.

“These important historical documents may be a great loss to history – and their disappearance must urgently be investigated.”

Amnesty International expressed deep concern that evidence from Northern Ireland and elsewhere is “being allowed to vanish”.

“Theresa May must order a government-wide search for these ‘lost’ files and their restoration to their rightful place in the archives at Kew,” said Patrick Corrigan, Amnesty International’s Northern Ireland programme director.

“Victims of human rights abuses in Northern Ireland have a right to full disclosure of what happened to them and their loved ones at the hands of the state.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A letter to the prime minister, James Callaghan, in 1977 documented how ministers gave permission for the use of torture against internees in Northern Ireland in the 1970s. Photograph: Central Press/Getty Images

The disappearances demonstrate the lack of oversight government departments are subject to when commandeering official papers after they have been declassified, therefore depriving historians of the chance to scrutinise their contents. In some cases, papers from within files appear to have been carefully selected and withdrawn from their collection.



“Accountability and justice demand that these files are among the evidence available to families, judges and historians in determining the truth of what happened here during three decades of violence,” said Corrigan.



“Revelations that government departments are requisitioning and then misplacing crucial files strengthen our view that decisions on the disclosure of findings by the proposed Historical Investigations Unit in Northern Ireland cannot be left to UK government ministers, as currently demanded by the Northern Ireland Office.”

Reprieve – the human rights advocacy organisation – also condemned the government, fearing that future possible abuses may be hidden from the public eye.

“This is deeply troubling and unfortunately follows a pattern we have seen before,” said Maya Foa, director. “Ministers have previously blamed ‘water damage’ for destroying crucial files showing complicity in rendition and torture, and right now they are forcing legal cases seeking to expose the truth about UK involvement in George Bush’s ‘war on terror’ into secret courts where the public and press are denied access.”

“With a new US president openly supporting torture and other human rights abuses, the tendency of the British government to conceal and cover up creates a serious risk that abuses carried out in our name in future will be hidden from the public until it’s too late.”



Similar files held in the National Archives have previously been instrumental in exposing human rights violations committed by the UK in Northern Ireland.



A 1977 letter from the home secretary, Merlyn Rees, to the prime minister, Jim Callaghan, documented how ministers gave permission for the use of torture against internees in Northern Ireland in the 1970s, evidence that was reportedly withheld from the European court of human rights.

Amnesty has formerly argued that the patchwork system of investigation established in Northern Ireland has proved inadequate for the task of uncovering the full truth about human rights violations committed by all sides.

In 2012 the Guardian disclosed that 1.2m documents were being unlawfully kept at a high-security compound in Buckinghamshire. The cache of files came to public attention when the FCO was forced to admit it had withheld thousands of colonial-era papers after elderly Kenyans took a case to the high court, following their detention and torture in the 1950s during the Mau Mau rebellion.