The cases of Belhaj and Rahmatullah involved litigation of UK involvement in the US-led extraordinary rendition system. Image credit: Arun Kundnani. All rights reserved.
The timing could not have been better. Days before the inauguration in the US of a president whose ambitions include bringing back CIA ‘black site’ secret prisons and the torture of terrorist suspects, the UK Supreme Court clarified beyond doubt that British officials - and ministers - would be held accountable in the UK courts for complicity in foreign states’ human rights violations, in private law actions in tort.
The judgment followed the joined cases of Belhaj and Rahmatullah which had been heard by a seven-judge court in November 2015. Both cases involved allegations of British officials’ complicity in rendition and torture.
