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28th Mar 2024

EU torture law has loopholes, human rights NGO says

The European trade in torture and execution instruments is still ongoing despite a recent EU law aimed at stopping such trade in the EU, according to a report by Amnesty International.

In its report launched on Tuesday (27 February) "European Union: Stopping the Trade in the Tools of Torture" the international human rights group called on the EU to take urgent steps to prevent any exploitation of legal loopholes in the regulation that came into force in July last year.

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  • Torture is almost universally considered to be an extreme violation of human rights (Photo: Wikipedia)

It also urged the European Commission and the 27 member states to tighten export controls on handcuffs, electric shock equipment, whips and other products which could be used to torture prisoners.

"Equipment designed for "security" purposes but which could be used for capital punishment, torture or other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment...has still been traded over the last few years by EU companies," the report said.

The group said that items synonymous with torture and executions - including spiked batons, wall handcuffs and specially designed hanging ropes - should be added to the list of banned instruments in the EU mentioned in the regulation.

Amnesty also wants the EU to add "sjamboks" - a specially designed whip - and electric batons, known to have been used by police against Roma minorities in Bulgaria and Slovakia, to a list instruments that should be controlled.

Further loopholes pointed out in the Amnesty report include that EU companies and individuals are still able to broker deals in torture equipment outside of the EU while the rules also fail to oversee imports or trade of such equipment within the EU itself.

So far, only 11 of the 27 EU member states have implemented a national law that sets out the penalty for breaking the current rules, which ban the export of products including electric chairs and guillotines, and restricted sales of other goods including leg irons and electric shock devices with more than 10,000 volts.

The 11 countries are Austria, Denmark, Greece, Ireland, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Poland, Slovenia, Sweden and the UK.

"In practice the lack of regulation means that [for example] "European handcuffs" can continue to be supplied to security forces with a history of abuse, even those subject to EU [arms] embargoes such as Zimbabwe and Myanmar," said Dick Oosting, head of Amnesty's EU office in Brussels.

Furthermore, Amnesty is also concerned with a legal loophole that allows EU companies to sell torture instruments to countries outside the EU as long at the instruments do not enter EU soil.

In total 150 companies from 21 EU member states - Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and the UK - have supplied third countries with electric shock batons and stun guns.

"At a time where the EU's traditional stance against torture has been undermined by the complicity of member states in extraordinary renditions that led to torture, the EU can ill afford to be seen to tolerate the trade of potentially dangerous equipments to dubious destinations," Mr Oosting said in a statement, citing the recent European Parliament report stating that some EU member states were implicit to persons being kidnapped by CIA rendition flights between 2001 and 2005.

"Freedom from torture is a human right," Amnesty underlined.

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