Guardian; "Clarke backs down on detainees"

Alan Travis and Clare Dyer
Wednesday January 26, 2005
The Guardian

The home secretary, Charles Clarke, is expected to announce today that he will accept the law lords' ruling that the indefinite detention without trial of 12 terror suspects in Britain breaches human rights laws.

The ruling, which came just before Christmas, struck at the heart of the emergency anti-terror legislation passed in the aftermath of September 11 by the former home secretary, David Blunkett.

Mr Clarke is expected to outline to the Commons today his proposals to amend the legislation to meet the human rights concerns raised by the House of Lords. He is likely to propose a new civil order, similar to an anti-social behaviour order.

It would impose strict surveillance conditions on terror suspects, including banning them from using the internet and mobile phones, and possibly a new form of house arrest.

More at; http://www.guardian.co.uk/guantanamo/story/0,13743,1398682,00.html



http://www.guardian.co.uk/cartoons/0,7371,337484,00.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4207295.stm

House arrest (applying to UK & foreign suspects), but still no prospect of a trial...

Are they applying for asylum and/or economic immigration status; or do they already have right of abode in the UK? Are they all in the same situation?

I ask because (and this may be unpopular here) if there are reasonable grounds to suspect an applicant of terrorist involvement (but not 'beyond a reasonable doubt'), I have a bit of sympathy with the government's position: it's tough to force Britain to accept a dodgy character walking freely around, just because their own country has decided to torture etc. them. If, on the other hand, there has already been a decision to allow them into the UK, then I think we probably don't have the right to start imposing these conditions on them.

In any case, I'm very worried by the Home Secretary making the decision, rather than a court. Strangely, Clarke himself drew attention to this:



Since one of the original Law Lords' objections was that the treatment of citizens and non-citizens was unequal, this would give Clarke the power to restrict the movement of someone (including British citizens), without it ever being tested in a court. As the Conservative spokesman said, that didn't work in Northern Ireland, and there's no reason to think it will work now.

shouldn't be used as an excuse to extend it to UK citizens...

Algerian foreign nationals,seeking asylum.

"Who are the terror detainees?

All of the men at the centre of the government's anti-terror detentions were foreign nationals
and none were being held under criminal charge pending trial.

In addition, none of the men could be deported
because lawyers believed they would face persecution in their home countries.

What we do know and can report is limited
as few documents relating to the men are in the public domain."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4101751.stm


I think that the whole house-arrest scheme will not last very long;it will fail at its' first legal challenge.There are two options available to Clarke,either charge these guys or release them under supervision.Since they are all Real-&-Serious-Threats,to the Very-Fabric-Of-Our-Civilisation,there must be mountains of evidence proving that they are the Most-Dangerous-Terrorists-Ever. Or maybe,before 9/11 they were just political refugees with big bushy beards,who were deemed worthy of asylum,& afterwards they became the stuff of nightmares.

http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/cm200405/cmhansrd/cm050126/debtext/50126-04.htm#50126-04_spmin0

These bits particularly interest me:

"There is a widespread misconception that if we could only adduce intercept as evidence, we would be able to prosecute those detained. However, the review of intercept as evidence found no evidence to support this,"

So, in other words, even if the intercept evidence were admissable in a court, whatever it actually contains is so far far away from showing guilt that it's not worth even trying a prosecution.

"Some of the material that we have in these cases is inadmissible, and other material, while technically admissible, could not be adduced without compromising national security, damaging relationships with foreign powers or intelligence agencies, or putting the lives of sources at risk"

II'd love to know which foreign powers we'd damage our realtionships with, wouldn't you? Palau perhaps? Or Iceland? And as for those intelligence agencies - those would be the ones that swore blind there were WMDs in Iraq. Hmm.

"capable of general application to any suspected terrorist irrespective of nationality or, for most controls, of the nature of the terrorist activity—whether international or domestic"

so if we think you're planning to release some rats from a laboratory EVEN THOUGH WE HAVE NO EVIDENCE AT ALL we can imprison you in your own home.

"protecting the public from terrorist-related activities"
What are they then? Who defines them? And who defines who is, and who is not a terrorist?

"A careful balance has to be struck between the rights of individuals and the protection of society against threats from organisations that seek to destroy central attributes of our society, such as freedom of belief, speech and association, freedom of expression and even our central democracy".

A central attribute of our society is the right to a trial by jury.



EDIT: added this:
"My principal responsibility as Home Secretary is to preserve our democracy against those who seek to destroy it through terrorist attacks".

NO NO NO. Your principal task is to preserve our democracy FULL STOP>