Stop the use of torture
Reprieve fights to get justice for people who have been tortured.
and challenges the systems that enable the abuse.
Add your name to our official record of opposition to torture.
Torture and the death penalty
Across the four continents where we work, many of the people we support on death row have been tortured:
In India, police tortured our client Jagtar Singh Johal with electric shocks until he signed a blank piece of paper that they later presented as a confession.
In Malawi, police beat and starved Ishmael Gome until he marked his name on a statement he couldn’t read, a false murder confession.
We get people off death row by proving their confessions were extracted under torture. We raise the alarm with United Nations legal experts and expose the torture in the media – always with the consent of the survivors or their loved ones.
Reprieve fights to get justice for people who have been tortured and challenges the systems that enable abuse.
Torture and “national security”
Torture and “national security”:
Reprieve confronts torture used as a tool in the name of “national security”.
This work began post-9/11, when the US created a vast network of secret prisons that operated, in effect, as torture chambers. In the “War on Terror”, America and its allies kidnapped and tortured people, rebranding it as “extraordinary rendition” and “enhanced interrogation”. We have been standing up to this horrific state violence – and calling it what it is – ever since.
Reprieve helps torture survivors get justice:
In 2018, years of Reprieve investigations concluded with concluded with a sitting Prime Minister giving an unprecedented apology for Britain’s role in kidnapping and torturing two people.
In 2025, we won a substantial settlement for a family kidnapped and tortured during the “War on Terror”.
In 2026, we helped two former Guantánamo detainees win a vital legal claim. We showed they should never have been sent back to their home country, because of the risk of torture.
Ending UK complicity in torture.
We demand changes to laws and policies that fail to protect people from torture.
In 2021, the Government proposed legislation effectively granting British soldiers accused of war crimes immunity from prosecution. We ran a successful campaign which resulted in the Government backing down and making changes to the Overseas Operations Act.
Jagtar Singh Johal was tortured in India following an apparent tip-off from MI6. We’re supporting his legal claim against the UK Government – and calling for a change in policy to prevent the same thing happening to anyone else.
UK funding supports Bahraini justice bodies that whitewash torture claims. We exposed how they covered up the torture of two men who were sentenced to death using a torture-extracted confession.
UK intelligence sharing where there is a risk of torture is governed by rules called the Principles. Alongside this, a Government policy on Overseas Justice and Security Assistance is supposed to prevent UK involvement in human rights abuses when working with other countries. Both are failing to protect people, and we’re demanding better.
Right now, current reviews by the Government risk rubber-stamping these failed policies. Reprieve has submitted evidence to ensure that victims of torture are heard: people like Jagtar Singh Johal and Ali Kololo, an innocent man sentenced to death in Kenya following a deeply flawed investigation and trial supported by the UK’s Metropolitan Police.
Donate
In 2026, authoritarian regimes are doubling down on torture, often with the complicity of democratic states. Will you donate today to stand with us against torture?
Read Ishmael's story
One of the 193
“Then they started doing what they do to investigate: they beat us and we stayed there for two weeks.”
Country
Malawi
Case Type
Death Penalty
Outcome
Released
Latest Updates
Published: 03/09/26
2 minute(s)
UK POLICE TRAINING FORCES FOR HUMAN RIGHTS-ABUSING GOVERNMENTS - REPRIEVE AND DECLASSIFIED
A new investigation by Declassified has found that British police have run more than a dozen training sessions since 2023 for countries that the UK Government has flagged for their poor human rights record. Declassified’s FOI revealed that the UK’s College of Policing has run multiple training sessions…
Published: 04/12/24
Reprieve warns OSJA review 'rubber stamps flawed human rights policy'
A coalition of NGOs have warned in a letter to the government that their review of the UK’s Overseas Security and Justice Assistance guidance (OSJA) “risks rubber stamping the last government’s deeply flawed human rights policy.” In theory, the OSJA policy requires the government to carry out a…
Published: 02/04/24
MPs express concern as 'torture tip-off' requests double
The 2022 report from the Investigatory Powers Commissioner’s Office reveals that the number of requests to share information despite a real risk of torture doubled year on year. Dan Dolan, Reprieve’s director of policy and advocacy, said: “These ministerial referrals represent real people at risk of being tortured…
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