EU countries urged to do more to combat torture

National governments must face up to their responsibilities in speaking out against torture, a senior MEP has said.

UK Liberal deputy Baroness Sarah Ludford, vice chair of parliament's subcommittee on human rights, said that there was “a lot of work to do” in making sure that the perpetrators of torture were held to account.

"We as the European parliament have to ask ourselves, what further pressure can we apply on national governments in order to get accountability?" she told TheParliament.com. "We’ve got to keep pushing and pushing."

Ludford was speaking after a special screening in Brussels on Tuesday of the film 'Standard Operating Procedure' by US director Errol Morris, a documentary on the abuse of detainees at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison.

The film centres on photographs taken in autumn 2003, which highlight the extent of abuse by the US military towards those held in the compound.

The film includes accounts of prisoners being placed in stress positions, forced to strip naked and being beaten, in one case leading to death.

Morris described the prison as a "concentration camp in the middle of the Sunni triad" but said that he was still waiting for anwers from the US administration as to why these practices were allowed to happen.

"The film did not produce a thorough investigation of the place. That remains to be done," he said.

Spanish ALDE deputy Ignasi Guardans said that there was a limit to the extent that parliament could act against torture, but stressed the important role it played in holding member states to account.

"National parliaments have the necessary instruments to take action against torture," he said.

"We don’t want all the responsibility with the European parliament because that takes responsibility away from the national parliaments," he added.

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