Assessing Damage, Urging Action serious dilemmas. If intelligence or other State agencies are systematically sharing information with countries and agencies with a known record of human rights violations, it is difficult to resist the argument that States are complicit, wittingly or unwittingly, in the serious human rights violations committed by their partners in counter-terrorism. At a Panel meeting with government officials in Washington D.C., there was an implicit charge of hypocrisy levelled against the US’s European partners who publicly criticise renditions, and/or call for the closure of Guantánamo Bay, but appear willing to rely on the intelligence gathered as a result of these practices. A charge of complicity becomes all the more difficult to refute if States differentiate (as they appear to be doing) between those situations when torture, and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment is, and is not, acceptable. Some States accept the prohibition on intelligence gathered under torture being used in legal proceedings, but at the same time seem ready to justify the use of such intelligence for operational purposes (for example to prevent a terrorist attack). The first usage is supposedly more acceptable (or at least less reprehensible) than the latter.198 This differentiation between the use of information obtained by torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, for “legal” and for “operational” purposes is problematic for several reasons. It undermines the absolute prohibition on torture which entails a continuum of obligations – not to torture, not to acquiesce in torture, and not to validate the results of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. Secondly, it suggests a water-tight distinction between “legal” and “operational” use which is probably illusory, and certainly the Panel was supplied with examples where information was supposedly sought on operational grounds, but subsequently relied upon in legal proceedings that followed. Thirdly, States have publicly claimed that they are entitled to rely on information that has been derived from the illegal practices of others; in so doing they become “consumers” of torture and implicitly legitimise, and indeed encourage, such practices by creating a “market” for the resultant intelligence. In the language of criminal law, States are “aiding and abetting” serious human rights violations by others. 4. Impunity and lack of accountability The Panel has reported above many of the examples it was given of intelligence bodies operating outside of the law (both domestic and international). On the contrary, few examples were proffered of the intelligence community, or individual members, being held to account for this wrongdoing. Many witnesses testified to a persistent sense of impunity on the part of the intelligence community. 198 The famous “ticking bomb” scenario has been usefully explored, and debunked, in a booklet by the Association for the Prevention of Torture. However, even this argument is logically irrelevant when seeking to justify the regular and systematic sharing of illegally-garnered intelligence. See also, Association for the Prevention of Torture, “Defusing the Ticking Bomb Scenario – Why we must say No to torture, always”, September 2007. 85