BRUSSELS, Mar 17, 2010 (IPS) - Equipment designed for torturing prisoners is still being exported from European Union (EU) countries despite a four-year-old ban on such trade, according to a new report by Amnesty International.
The human rights group has found that companies active in several of the EU's 27 states have exploited loopholes in controls aimed at putting an end to the selling of instruments of torture.
The EU rules - in force since 2006 - need to be widened to cover a number of devices that remain outside their scope, Amnesty has argued. It highlights how Nidec, a company trading from Spain, has been dealing in 'stun cuffs' in the past few years. Intended for restraining a detainee by placing them around his or her limbs, such cuffs inflict a painful electric shock. Unlike similar "stun belts", the cuffs are not explicitly banned by the EU's rules.
Brussels officials say that the new report should trigger a discussion about how the rules can be strengthened. One source, speaking on condition of anonymity, explained that no action has been taken to date because a newly appointed European Commission, the EU's executive arm, only assumed office in February. "For the time being, everything is rather open," the source told IPS. "This is not because we like loopholes, it is quite simply because a new team has been getting started."
But Amnesty's specialist on the EU's foreign policy David Nichols described those comments as "a convenient excuse for inaction." He said that human rights groups had brought the flaws in the EU's rules to the Commission's attention long before now and that its staff had ample power to rectify the situation.
