Does the UK really want to benefit from torture?

Once again the UK authorities attitude to torture is in the news again this time a Bloggers have already started writing about the story too.

Dergoul was held and  ill-treated in both Afghanistan and Guantanamo. Heres how he described detention in Kandahar: "[I]n Kandahar I was hooded whilst being taken to interrogation and some of the time during interrogation. I was interrogated at least three or four times a week for up to seven or eight hours a day. Sometimes I was just left sitting in the interrogation tent with nothing, no food or toilet facilities. The guards in Kandahar regularly tore up the Quran and threw it. My body hair was shaved, including my pubic hair After three months in Kandahar I was flown to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on 1 May 2002 I was stripped naked, given a full body search and pictures were taken of me naked."

(Taken from our October 2004 report This is certainly one to watch, a test case with real potential in the fight against torture.

Heres a film made by Witness and others that describes the reality of torture in the War on Terror. Does the UK really want to be associated with these kind of practices?

There was a compelling report (click on todays video news section) on BBCs 10pm TV news last night reporter Zaiba Malik accompanied police on a raid on a house in East London where thousands of counterfeit DVDs were found.

She reported that while the exact scale of this trade in the UK is unknown, the majority of the sellers on our streets are believed to be Chinese, and some of these people are trafficked. The trade is controlled by organised criminal gangs. Any victim of trafficking forced to sell fake DVDs here is in a precarious position should they want to escape their traffickers and ask for help they risk being treated simply as illegal immigrants.

If Britain ratifies the European Convention Against Trafficking as Amnesty is calling for, they will at least be guaranteed some limited protection. Add your name to a petition calling for ratification here.