All indications of threats that we receive are pursued...One cannot tell...from the look of the information where they originated from and how they were produced. The possibility that they might not have been obtained according to our rule of law principles must not lead us to ignore them. After all, the point is to prevent terrorist attacks.105 A few days after Fromm made these statements, a spokesperson for Schäuble confirmed that information obtained under torture in a third country would be used to exclude threats of terrorist attacks. The “active fetching” of such information, however, was not acceptable.106 Public statements affirming the legitimacy of using torture intelligence bring into question Germany’s commitment to the prevention and eradication of torture worldwide. As previously noted, the risk is that such statements can create demand for intelligence obtained under abuse. Use of Torture Material as Evidence The willingness to partner with unsavory regimes is accompanied by troubling signs of erosion of the absolute prohibition on the use of torture evidence in judicial proceedings. The trial of Aleem Nasir is illustrative. A naturalized German citizen originally from Pakistan, Nasir was sentenced in July 2009 to eight years in prison for providing support to a terrorist organization, in a case that began with intelligence received from Pakistan. Nasir was arrested in Lahore, Pakistan, in June 2007 and held in ISI custody for two months. Nasir claims he was beaten with a hard rubber paddle and a bamboo stick into making a false confession. Nasir was visited and questioned by a German consular official while in ISI custody (he claims he was also questioned by British and American intelligence officers), and Nasir told journalists his interrogators had been “fully briefed” by German authorities.107 Nasir was repeatedly shown pictures of Fritz Gelowicz, one of the accused in the Sauerland trial discussed below.108 105 Yassin Mussarbash, “Fromm defends the use of torture information,” Spiegel Online, December 4, 2006, www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/0,1518,452411,00.html (accessed September 3, 2009). Human Rights Watch translation. 106 AFP, “Schäuble shares Fromm’s opinion on torture evidence,” Berliner Zeitung, December 7, 2006, www.berlinonline.de/berliner-zeitung/archiv/.bin/dump.fcqi/2006/1207/politik/0136/index.html (accessed September 11, 2009). 107 Holger Stark, John Goetz, and Mattias Gebauer, “Germanys Relying on Pakistani Interrogation Methods,” Der Spiegel, October 1, 2007, http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,508931,00.html (accessed September 17, 2009). 108 Michael Moss and Souad Mekhennet, “Glimpses of a Shadowy World in Pakistan,” The New York Times, September 24, 2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/24/world/asia/24terror.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all (accessed September 17, 2009); “Germans Relying on Pakistani Interrogation Methods,” Der Spiegel, October 1, 2007. 39 Human Rights Watch | June 2010