had considered the point when passing the Special Immigration Appeals Commission Act 1997 or the 2001 Act, there might be a case for holding that the necessary implication of sections 21, 25 and 26 of the 2001 Act was that SIAC should take account of statements obtained by torture in another country. But that particular issue does not arise since Parliament was never asked to consider the question, either when passing these Acts or when approving the 2003 Rules, including the permissive rule 44(3). The point does not appear to have occurred to anyone. In any event, the revulsion against torture is so deeply ingrained in our law that, in my view, a court could receive statements obtained by its use only where this was authorised by express words, or perhaps the plainest possible implication, in a statute. Here, there are no express words and the provisions actually approved by Parliament do not go so far as to show that the officious bystander who asked whether SIAC could rely on a statement obtained by torture would have been testily suppressed with an “Oh, of course!” from the legislature. I therefore hold that SIAC should not take account of statements obtained by torture. 138. The courts’ deep-seated objection is to torture and to statements obtained by torture. The rejection of such statements is an exception to the general rule that relevant evidence is admissible even if it has been obtained unlawfully. On the other hand, the public interest does not favour SIAC rejecting statements that have not in fact been obtained by torture. More particularly, the public interest does not favour rejecting statements merely because there is a suspicion or risk that they may have been obtained in that way. Reports from various international bodies may well furnish grounds for suspicion that a country has been in the habit of using torture. That cannot be enough. To trigger the exclusion, it must be shown that the statement in question has been obtained by torture. 139. I draw support for that general approach from the judgment of the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights in Mamatkulov and Askarov v Turkey, 4 February 2005. The court had to consider allegations that Turkey had violated article 3 of the Convention by extraditing the applicants to Uzbekistan where political dissidents, such as the applicants, were tortured in prison. In support of their allegations, the applicants “referred to reports by ‘international investigative bodies’ in the human rights field denouncing both an administrative practice of torture and other forms of ill-treatment of political dissidents, and the Uzbek régime’s repressive policy towards dissidents.” The Grand Chamber held that, by itself, such generalised information was not sufficient even to establish that there was a real risk that the applicants -75-