BRITAIN: BRITAIN should no longer rely on US assurances that it does not use torture, an influential committee of British MPs said in a report released yesterday.
Britain had previously taken those assurances on face value, but after the CIA acknowledged "waterboarding" three detainees, Britain should change its stance, the House of Commons foreign affairs committee said in its annual report on human rights.
Foreign secretary David Miliband told parliament in April he thought the technique, where a suspect is subjected to simulated drowning, amounted to torture.
President Bush vetoed legislation in March that would have banned the technique.
Britain is a signatory to a UN convention barring the extradition of a person to a state where there are grounds for believing they might be tortured.
- (Reuters)