Source: IRNA
London, Aug 18, IRNA -- A 37-year-old Kenyan car dealer has started legal proceedings against the UK government, claiming he was abused both by the British and American interrogators after being kidnapped and driven across the border to Uganda.
The case is the first regarding torture under the UK's coalition government and since it rewrote the secret policy last year governing intelligence officers questioning people held overseas after previous allegations of torture.
Omar Awadh Omar claims that when he was illegally 'rendered' to Uganda last September, a British intelligence officer was waiting to question him alongside a number of men who identified themselves as FBI agents.
According to his solicitors, Public Interest Lawyers (PIL), he was allegedly punched, slapped, threatened and sexually humiliated by the Americans and a British intelligence officer joined in the abuse.
'These proceedings indicate in the clearest way that the government's policy of neither confirming nor denying whether it is involved in torture overseas is a flimsy cover up,' head of the PIL team, Phil Shiner said.
'The fact is that it is up to its neck in responsibility for torture in a long list of countries,' said Shiner, who has brought many cases of human rights abuses against the UK government.
Omar, who is a human rights activist, further alleges that his interrogators also tried to persuade him to become an informant while being questioned as a suspect for the Kampala bombing.
The case comes as the British government is already facing a number of legal challenges over number of loopholes in its rewritten secret policy that could continue to result in UK officers being involved in the torture of terrorism suspects.
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