The court of appeal lambasted the system of investigating and prosecuting incidents of torture and unlawful killings by British forces in Iraq in December. Its judgment, relating to the cases of six men who died in southern Iraq in 2003, provides a probing analysis of what is wrong and expresses the hope that fundamental deficiencies will be remedied.

But what hope is there that human rights principles will prevail at the highest-level of government? So far the government’s response has been dismal. Torturing Iraqi civilians to death have faced it with the clearest possible evidence that soldiers have shamed themselves, their regiments, the military and the general public. But it has insisted on denying the evidence of systematic torture. It denies that international human rights standards apply to UK armed forces personnel wherever they are in the world, and maintains that the Human Rights Act applies only within Britain.

The UK’s policy on torture lies in tatters. Following a ruling by the law lords, it can no longer rely on evidence obtained through torture by other states. It is under increasing pressure to investigate properly the CIA flights in and out of British airports. It finds itself out of step with the US, which at least accepts that the convention on torture and other human rights standards prohibiting torture apply to its personnel wherever they are in the world.

Now it finds that the court of appeal has exposed its military system. The court found that the obligation to comply with human rights standards would require a far greater investment in the resources available to the Royal Military Police, and the severance of their investigations from the military chain of command. If there is honour and decency left in the military and the government they will now take on board this judgment and initiate the inquiry and reform programme that the attorney general has been urging for many months.

It is troubling that the court of appeal judgment finds that there is jurisdiction only in a situation where UK troops deprive others of their liberty and then torture or kill them. It does not apply the same reasoning where there is control of others at roadblocks or during dawn raids in homes. Thus, troops wishing to avoid accountability for their actions of torture and abuse need only shoot dead the victim, after the abuse, to claim immunity on the basis of self-defence. The court of appeal failed to identify clear principles on which to decide whether actions of torture and abuse by agents of the state should fall within the jurisdiction of UK government.

The government must end this impunity. Given the judgment on the military system as it relates to torture cases, surely the time has come to stop playing games. It is a truism that if a single Iraqi can be tortured to death in detention by our soldiers it diminishes us all. And every member of this government is further diminished for every day that it puts off the independent investigation that is so desperately needed into what went wrong in Iraq. — The Guardian