Cherie Booth calls for West to stand up for human rights

Cherie Booth has delivered a passionate plea that basic human rights, such as the absolute ban on torturing suspects, should not to be sacrified by Western nations in the war on terror.

She risked antagonising the White House with implicit criticism of Guantanamo Bay, where detainees have been subject to allegedly brutal treatment, and of the "extraordinary rendition" practice of taking captives for interrogation and possible torture overseas.

The Prime Minister's wife also put herself at odds with her husband's government by strongly backing a law lords' decision to order the release of detainees at Belmarsh prison. Ms Booth said she worried that democracies had a "blind spot" on the issue of torture, stressing that international treaties forbade it without exception. In a speech to Chatham House, the international affairs thinktank, she said: "There can be no derogation from this, even in times of war. The [UN] convention could not be more explicit - no exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether there is a state of war, threat of war, a state of emergency or any other public emergency."

She argued that confessions produced from physical pain were both morally indefensible and unreliable. She added: "Desperate people will say whatever the torturer wants them to say."

Her comments echo complaints from former British detainees at Guantanamo that they were forced to sign "confessions" in an attempt to end the agony they faced. Her words also strike a very different note from the Bush administration which has argued that existing international conventions are out of date in the face of Islamist terrorism.

Ms Booth quoted the retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who has argued: "A state of war is not a blank cheque for a president when it comes to the rights of the nation's citizens." She also called for independent monitoring of the conditions faced by the Guantanamo detainees. Turning to Britain, Ms Booth, a human rights lawyer, praised the Belmarsh ruling three months ago in which the law lords ruled that evidence obtained by torture should never be used in British courts.

To ministers' embarrassment, they demanded that the detention of eight foreign terrorist suspects should be re-examined by the secret anti-terror courts in case the evidence against them had been extracted by torture.

Ms Booth said the law lords had "affirmed the vital democratic role for the courts in scrutinising and holding accountable governments".

But she said it was "too absolutist" to dismiss British attempts to sign diplomatic agreements with countries to allow deportations of terror suspects to take place. She concluded: "What matters is the need to ensure that anyone subject to return has the chance to challenge the effectiveness of such guarantees before being returned."