In a landmark admission, the U.K. government conceded on Wednesday that British intelligence agencies have been illegally spying on private communications between lawyers and clients for the past five years.

According to the Guardian, the government’s admission that it violated human rights law is “a severe embarrassment.”

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“In view of recent IPT judgments, we acknowledge that the policies adopted since [January] 2010 have not fully met the requirements of the ECHR, specifically article 8 (right to privacy),” a government spokesperson stated on Wednesday. “This includes a requirement that safeguards are made sufficiently public.”

The announcement follows several recent legal developments in the high-profile torture case of Libyan political activist Abdelhakim Belhadj, one of the surveillance targets.

Belhadj is suing several British intelligence agencies—including MI-5 and MI-6—for their alleged role, along with the CIA, in his and his wife’s rendition, imprisonment, and torture by then-Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi’s forces, from 2004 to 2010. His wife, Fatima Boudchar, was pregnant at the time of their kidnapping.

In October, Britain’s Court of Appeal ruled that Belhadj’s case must be heard, despite attempts by the U.K. government to throw the case out on the grounds that it might damage the country’s diplomatic relations with the U.S.

A month later, the government was forced to disclose secret GCHQ, MI-6, and MI-5 policies advising intelligence staff to “target the communications of lawyers” and use legally privileged material “just like any other item of intelligence.” “The government has been caught red-handed. The security agencies have been illegally intercepting privileged material and are continuing to do so—this could mean they’ve been spying on the very people challenging them in court.”
— Rachel Logan, Amnesty UK