The Law Lords were asked today to rule that evidence obtained by torture in a foreign country, including in American prison camps, cannot be used in British courts.

Former Belmarsh detainees are challenging a Court of Appeal judgement that it was not up the UK Government to check the exact sources of all the evidence it used to justify holding them without charge on suspicion of involvement in terrorism.

By a two to one majority, the appeal judges ruled in August last year that if the evidence was obtained under torture abroad with no involvement by the UK, it was usable and there was no obligation by the Government to inquire about its origins. The ruling has caused controversy.

Ben Emmerson QC, representing the detainees, told a panel of seven Law Lords: "This case raises in acute form the dilemma of any democracy when the judiciary is called upon to reconcile the protection of national security and the protection of human rights."

Mr Emmerson said that Britain was now swapping information with states that had a history of practising torture. He said he agreed that if that information allowed security forces to locate and make safe a bomb, they had a duty to act on it. But that same information could never be used in a court to prosecute whoever had given it, or those who had been named in it.

In the same way, the Home Secretary can use evidence which may have been extracted in by torture abroad to detain a suspected terrorist, but that same information cannot be used by the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC) to sanction their continued detention.

Mr Emmerson is representing eight of ten men, most of whom were first held in 2001, who challenged a ruling of SIAC that the Home Office had "sound material" to back up the decision that they were a threat to national security.

Their lawyers’ argument - that evidence obtained by alleged torture in United States camps should have been excluded by SIAC - was rejected by the Court of Appeal.

All 10 were detained under the terms of the Anti-terrorism Crime and Security Act which was hastily passed after the September 11 attacks in the US in 2001. Two of the men have since voluntarily left Britain.

The Government had to repeal part of the Act, which allowed only foreign nationals to be detained, after the Law Lords ruled it unlawful last December.

The Law Society, which represents solicitors, and several other campaigning bodies, including Amnesty International, will also put their arguments at the House of Lords that under no circumstances must torture evidence ever be heard in courts.

Mr Emmerson wants the Law Lords to declare that SIAC proceedings under the Anti Terrorism Act are subject to an exclusionary rule, which prohibits the admission of statements obtained by foreign agents using torture or by inflicting inhuman and degrading treatment.

He said: "The central issue in this appeal is whether, and how, the courts will ensure that, in an era of global co-operation, the integrity of the judicial process is not compromised through the introduction of evidence which has been obtained by other states in breach of the universal prohibition on torture."

He said admission of such evidence compromises the integrity of the courts, not only because it falls foul of domestic and international prohibitions but because it allows the torturer an outlet for the information obtained.

"It affords an incentive to the torturer by making the act of torture worthwhile," said Mr Emmerson, saying that this amounted to the condoning of torture and ill-treatment.

"It amounts to an affront to the public conscience."

Mr Emmerson said that in a society governed by the rule of law, the courts should set their face against torture and against the fruits of torture because torturers are "the common enemy of all mankind".

The Court of Appeal’s restriction that such evidence was an abuse of process if British officials had connived in the torture or ill-treatment attached "insufficient weight to the court’s constitutional responsibility to suppress the manifestations of torture", said Mr Emmerson.

He said the view adopted by SIAC and by a majority of the Court of Appeal has been roundly rejected by the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Human Rights, the United Nations Committee Against Torture, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, the Council of Europe’s Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, the International Commission of Jurists and Amnesty International.

The hearing, expected to last three days, was adjourned until tomorrow.

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