Headliners
The Southern
Africa Development Community adopted a Declaration on the Protection of Persons with Albinism.
The UN Human Rights Council resolved to continue its human rights monitoring mission in Venezuela.
In Mozambique, six police officers were convicted and sentenced for killing protesters in Banhine National Park in 2020.
Iraq’s parliament is considering legal changes that would remove women’s rights in inheritance and divorce cases, and allow girls to be married from the age of nine.
Poland
announced plans for temporary suspension of the right to asylum.
Captured on camera: demonstrating an electro-shock glove at a trade fair in Birmingham UK Trading in torture
A British company has been caught on camera demonstrating electric-shock torture equipment at a security event in Birmingham. The revelation, by Amnesty International UK and the Omega Research Foundation, raises serious questions about the enforcement of UK laws prohibiting any trade in torture devices.
‘It’s alarming that such equipment is openly demonstrated at a UK trade fair, and West Midlands Police should urgently investigate,’ says Sacha Deshmukh, Amnesty International UK’s chief executive.
In one video, filmed in September at
the Emergency Services Show, British company The Squad Group demonstrates a device called the G.L.O.V.E. This emits a painful electric charge on contact with a person’s skin.
In the film the company emphasises the charge is only one tenth of what the device is capable of. The person volunteering to receive the shock grimaces in pain when the glove is used to grab his arm.
The Squad Group, whose directors are former police officers and include an ex-assistant chief constable, also promotes
8 AMNESTY WINTER 2024
a body-worn electric-shock device on its website. The E-Band Restrictor is designed to be worn around the ankle of a prisoner and can deliver its shock via a remote control. The trade in direct-contact and body-worn electric-shock weapons is illegal. In the UK police use of Tasers is the only permissible use of such weapons, and then only under strict licensing conditions.
The G.L.O.V.E. is what’s known as a conductive energy distraction device, the distraction being via the application of an electric shock. As such Amnesty and Omega, a fellow human rights organisation, believe it falls within the scope of prohibited torture equipment.
Last year Squad Group representatives also appeared in photographs and videos in Gibraltar, demonstrating their devices to the local police. Officers from UK police forces, UK Border Force and officials from the Ministry of Defence also attended the event, either in person or remotely.
Amnesty and Omega have alerted the trade fair organisers and the relevant UK authorities. At the time of writing, it is unclear what action has been taken.
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