By Nawaz Hanif of Reprieve

On 22^nd June 2004 Naheem Hussain and Rehan Zaman were arrested and taken to Dadyal police station, in Azad Kashmir, Pakistan. They had been accused of committing two murders in their village – and the police were determined to get a confession.

Over the next two weeks both these young men were tortured brutally in order to gain this confession. They were hung from the ceiling, beaten with sticks, had their fingernails removed with pliers and had red chillies rubbed in their eyes. When all this failed to force a confession, the police threatened to arrest their loved ones – Naheem’s wife and mother and Rehan’s elderly grandmother – and torture them. The boys quickly confessed. Now, six and a half years on, they are still in prison waiting for their trial. The confessions that they gave are the main evidence against them, and even though the forensic ballistics analysis completely exonerates them, they remain in prison waiting for the slow wheels of justice to turn.

For the Dadyal Police, it appears that confessions are the be all and end all of their work – get a confession and the conviction will follow. Yet history is littered with examples of confessions proving unreliable. In the case of the Birmingham Six, it meant innocent men spent 16 years in prison for a crime they did not commit. However, perhaps the most dramatic example is the case of Ibn Sheikh Al Libi who was captured and tortured by the Americans as part of the so-called “War on Terror”. Following his capture he was subjected to the US military’s programme of “enhanced interrogation techniques” as they thought he knew more than he was letting on. After a period of torture he told them what they wanted to hear – that Al-Qaeda were working alongside Saddam Hussain, a claim that was found to be totally false at the cost of thousands of innocent lives.

Unreliable confession evidence is toxic when investigating a crime. Not only does it contaminate a case against an innocent prisoner who could spend years waiting for justice, but it also allows the real perpetrator to escape unpunished – free to commit further crimes. That is why so many countries have done everything in their power to end this practice. This includes Pakistan, which has shown a great deal of political will to end police torture. By prohibiting torture in the constitution, enacting conduct rules for the police and ratifying various international treaties that prohibit torture, the government of Pakistan has sent a strong message that torture should play no role in police investigations in Pakistan. Yet despite this strong legislative framework, torture continues to be widely used – and people are fed up with it.

This is why Reprieve has turned its attention to this issue and launched our Pakistan Police Torture Project. By using the confidential witness statements of victims, we hope to assist, prevent and reform the system in Pakistan. The statements we are gathering will be used: to assist those currently detained in Pakistan as a result of confessions extracted through torture; to prevent the detention and further mistreatment of other victims following such confessions and; to reform the police officers who are responsible for such abuse through public, political and legal intervention. We are therefore looking to speak to anyone who either is the victim of police torture in Pakistan, or knows someone who is, in order to challenge this practice.

Our investigators have come across many British Pakistanis affected by such mistreatment during trips to their ancestral homes, targeted as a result of perceived wealth and lack of local and authoritative contacts. This project provides an opportunity for British Pakistanis who have suffered at the hands of the abused to come forward, speak to Reprieve confidentially and help to affect permanent and positive change.

We are not simply attempting to “show Pakistan up” or do her “besti”. Far from it. Reprieve is simply trying to correct an injustice, after striving to rectify the abuses that the US and UK have committed as part of the supposed “War on Terror”. We have represented and freed dozens of Guantanamo Bay detainees including Moazzam Begg and Binyam Mohammed. We also want to find and publicise positive examples from Pakistan – identifying the principled policemen that refuse to torture because they know that it is wrong. Those who stand up for justice in difficult situations need not only our recognition, but also our respect and admiration.

At Reprieve we have the lawyers and expertise that can make a difference, but we need the evidence. We understand that it may be difficult to come forward and talk to us about the things that have happened to yourself or a loved one, but if we want to stop these practices in the future we need everyone to take action now. This project has a lofty ambition: to see police torture in Pakistan consigned to history, thereby making life easier for all Pakistanis, British or otherwise. Please help us.

See http://www.reprieve.org.uk/pakistanpolicetortureproject for more.