In their eagerness to prevent future terrorist attacks, both the US and Britain have focused on intelligence gathering in lieu of prosecution. But that focus poses its own security threat by ignoring the problem of what to do with terrorist suspects once they are captured.

America’s use of coercion to extract testimony from suspects renders those suspects virtually unprosecutable, as prosecutors face the nearly impossible task of proving that evidence was not derived from mistreatment. For the past year, beginning with the Senate testimony of Alberto Gonzales, US attorney general, in January, the Bush administration has claimed the power to subject detainees to “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment”, as long as the victim is a non-American held outside the US. To provide a locale for such mistreatment, it has established secret detention centres in Eastern Europe and elsewhere.