HUNDREDS of survivors of torture abroad seeking protection in Britain have been wrongly locked up in detention centres, the High Court ruled yesterday.

Mr Justice Ouseley concluded that asylum-seekers had been unlawfully detained as their treatment had fallen outside a new Home Office definition of torture which he found too narrow.

He ruled in favour of seven former detainees and a charity, who also argued that the government policy would lead to more vulnerable people being put in harm’s way by being locked up in detention centres.

The seven include victims of sexual and physical abuse, sexual exploitation, trafficking, homophobic attacks, a child abused by loan sharks and a young man kidnapped and abused by the Taliban.

But they were not recognised as torture victims under the Home Office’s redefined guidelines introduced last September.

At a hearing in March, Stephanie Harrison QC, appearing for the charity Medical Justice and the individuals, said torture had previously been defined as covering acts committed by any individual or group; the new definition referred to torture carried out by official state agents only or terrorist groups holding territory.

It failed to protect people who had been seriously ill-treated by drug traffickers or because of their race, religion, or because they were homosexual or members of an ethnic minority, Ms Harrison had said.

She argued that torture did not only occur in police stations or at the hands of state security forces, but also “in your own home or in hotels.”

Medical Justice, which sent volunteer doctors to assist two of those in detention, said there was a lack of means for obtaining evidence of torture.

Mr Justice Ouseley found that the Home Office ignored warnings from the charity that vulnerable people were “allowed to deteriorate until avoidable harm has occurred and can be documented.”

The Home Office had admitted it unlawfully held the seven detainees and that it applied its policy wrongly in more than half of 340 cases heard in the first 10 weeks of it being implemented.

One detainee said: “The policy allowed the Home Office to turn a blind eye to my suffering and the suffering of hundreds of other torture survivors.

“Although I welcome the decision, it is still upsetting that the Home Office, who should protect people like me, rejected me and put me in detention which reminded me of the ordeal I suffered in my country of origin.”

A spokesman for Medical Justice said the Home Office’s policy “demonstrates its sheer contempt for vulnerable detainees whose lives it is responsible for.”

The campaigning charity called for immigration removal centres, where asylum-seekers are detained, to be closed down. Some are run by the prison service, others run for profit by privateers such as G4S and Serco.

Shadow home secretary Diane Abbott said: “There must be no attempt to work around or simply ignore the ruling, as happened in previous cases.

“No victims of torture should be held in detention.”

Duncan Lewis Solicitors, representing five of the former detainees, said the ruling “should serve as a reminder to Home Secretary Amber Rudd that she and her department are not above the law.”

The ruling follows the broadcast of undercover footage by BBC Panorama last month of people in detention centres appearing to be abused, including a guard throttling a detainee and threatening to kill him, and a nurse colluding in falsifying his medical records.

Since its broadcast, three people have died in detention.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) said the government must strengthen human rights protections for detainees.

In a statement, it said: “We question the ability of the Home Office to ensure that companies contracted to run immigration detention facilities safeguard people’s basic rights.”

Britain is the only country in Europe that doesn’t have a statutory time limit on immigration detention and the EHRC is calling for that to change.