The latest development in Abu Zudaydah’s long quest for justice - an important preliminary judgment on 20 December by the UK Supreme Court in the civil claim against the UK government for complicity in torture, dismissing a government appeal that would have imposed obstacles to justice.
The Government ’s appeal concerned applicable law: it had argued the claimant must argue his tort case based not on English law but on the law of the multiple states where he may have been secretly detained and tortured at the time of the alleged complicity (the UK sent questions to be posed to him in the knowledge that he was being tortured). In the circumstances of this case, where our client was secretly detained at multiple CIA detention sites, to require him to argue based on foreign law would have been unjust and imposed an excessive burden. The UK courts agreed and found that in the circumstances of his case it was substantially more appropriate for the applicable law to be English law. We hope the government will now engage constructively to redress the violations to which our client has been - and continues to be - subject to as a result of the shared responsibility of many states, including the UK, in his ongoing arbitrary detention and torture.
Abu Zubaydah has now been held for almost 22 years without charge trial or review of the lawfulness of his detention. Last year the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention found the UK was one of the states complicit in his torture. It called for him to be immediately released. The states responses to that decision are now due.
See press release by Bhatt Murphy, solicitors in the UK case and more information on Abu Zubaydah’s international litigation here.