Government failing British citizens being tortured in foreign jails, human rights report claims

Report by human rights organisation seeking justice for torture victims says more than 100 British citizens a year are subjected to ill-treatment in foreign jails, but many struggle to get the Foreign Office assistance they need.

The British Government is failing to provide strong enough protection to its citizens when they are unjustly jailed or tortured abroad, a new report claims.

The human rights organisation Redress says more than 100 British citizens a year are subjected to ill-treatment or torture in foreign jails, but many struggle to get the Foreign Office assistance they need.

Highlighting the case of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the British mother jailed in Iran, the report accuses the Government of “a failure to speak out in the face of serious human rights violations” that “seriously weakens the protection of its own nationals and risks legitimizing abuses.”

Demanding that the rights to consular assistance and diplomatic protection be enshrined in UK law, the report also alleges a catalogue of failings involving other Britons, many of whom can’t be named for their own protection,

including:

A torture victim who waited three months for a follow-up consular visit, despite evidence of the torture having already been made public at an earlier court hearing. The case of a British national arrested and imprisoned in the Middle East who “observed bitterly that while the British Embassy only visited its nationals once every three months, other countries’ embassies conducted weekly visits and ‘provide[d] real support’”

A complaint has since been made about the quality of care from the Foreign Commonwealth Office, details of which can be seen in the pdf document below.