In a February 2007 case hearing (http://tinyurl.com/yegllmj) U was described as having been in a “senior position in Mujahedin training camp in Afghanistan” with “Direct links to UBL (Usama Bin Laden) and other senior AQ (Al Qaeda) figures.” He was also “Involved in supporting terrorists including those involved in the planned attack on the Strasbourg Christmas Market in 2000″. Most of the testimony against ‘U’ stems from Ahmed Ressam, (he of the alleged ‘Los Angeles Airport plot’ of 2000). [Whenever these 2 ‘plots’ (Strasbourg Market & Los Angeles Airport) referred to, I smell a rat].

The same case notes state that “there is clear and credible evidence that, between March 2000 and February 2001, a group of three Algerians, led by him ['U'], purchased £230,000 worth of communication equipment from a UK company ‘Integrated Communications Solutions Ltd.’, which is run by ‘boss’ Stuart Castell. Further detail of this £230K purchase is provided in paragraph 8 of the October 2003 SIAC judgement concerning Appellant ‘B’ (http://tinyurl.com/y9af8kj). The equipment is described as being “procured for use by extremists in Chechnya and by the GSPC in Algeria.” The hearing notes also state (in paragraph 9) that [Appellant] B’s “activities were directed to supporting the GSPC and the Ibn Khattab faction in Chechnya”.

From the SIAC judgement SSHD v AJOUAOU and A, B, C and D, of 29th October 2003 (http://tinyurl.com/yhfas89) paragraph 214 states that Ibn Khattab was “receiving American backing’.

Somewhere therein all these (open & closed) judgements lies the corollary, that these (Algerian) persons were involved (as uninitiated/unbeknown but encouraged patsies?) in the precursory activities upon which the subsequent War on/of Terror is based.

The fact that the prosecutors cannot lay bare their cases is telling, ‘national security’ excuses aside.

Thanks for your continued investigations & research, Andy.

Having seen some of this secret “evidence” that the HO very graciously agreed to reveal at one of the SIAC hearings back in February, I can tell you that if the rest is anything like that (it was simply a list of the locations of railway stations and bus routes!) then it is not really evidence at all.

The other important point is that I am not sure you appreciate just how much the SIAC system institutionalises injustice. You say that “the SIAC procedures are designed to enable sensitive evidence to be withheld from the suspect while ensuring that his interests can be protected as far as possible by the special advocate who can challenge the closed evidence on his behalf”. But the Special Advocate can’t challenge the secret evidence, because he/she is sworn to secrecy! This is something even Afua Hirsch in the Guardian seems to have missed in her excellent article a few weeks ago.

This is an important point when the arguments put forward by the HO depend on anonymous and inaccurate statements such as the one that Jack mentions in his article. How could the Special Advocate check things like the HO’s attempt to weave an “escape plot” out of a few old maps – the subject of one of which has been either accidentally or deliberately mistyped – when he/she is not allowed to reveal anything about the “evidence” to anyone, not even the appellant’s lawyer?

My overriding concern, which comes from having familiarized myself for many years with the intelligence-gathering of the US agencies, from having observed the cooperation between agencies of different countries (the case of Binyam Mohamed comes most immediately to mind, although there are, of course, many others), and also — more worryingly — from having learned how countries not only share evidence but also draw on intelligence provided by countries with distinctly dubious human rights records, is that this information does not just involve domestic informers, who may, as you say, need protecting, but who may also, in some cases, not necessarily be reliable just because they are informers.

Beyond this (and that last point of mine is a major concern, I think) is the suspicion — or in some cases, the knowledge — that some of these sensitive sources are prisoners in other countries, who may have been tortured and have provided false information, and, over the last eight years, may have been prisoners held by the CIA or the US military, in Guantanamo or in secret prisons, who have also produced false information. It is for this reason, predominantly, that I believe the supposed evidence needs to be able to be tested objectively, and not because of the domestic aspects of the cases, where, I think, the problems could largely be overcome with the tactics of disguise that you discuss.

To a limited extent this can be resolved by dressing up the informer’s evidence and deliberately distorting it in such a way as to disguise its source. Witnesses’ voices can be disguised and they can testify behind screens or by video-link from another place. Sometimes the informer’s information can be corroborated by other means and the corroborative evidence disclosed safely to the suspect. But often that won’t be possible: even the search for corroboration may compromise the original informer’s safety. In some cases the informer may be the only person who has had access to the vital information which he has passed on to the authorities. In such situations there may be no way to protect him if his information has to be disclosed to the suspect and his lawyers. In such a case, what if the information he has supplied constitutes clear evidence that the suspect has indeed been planning a terrorist attack? The security authorities dare not allow the evidence to be disclosed to the suspect because it would compromise the informer and put him in danger, as well as deterring anyone else from giving secret information in future cases. Yet simply to drop the case against the suspect and set him free puts society in danger: it’s not possible to keep more than a few such people under 24-hour surveillance indefinitely. Sooner or later they can disappear into the woodwork.

I don’t claim to know the answer to this problem. I agree that it’s far better for suspects to be charged and tried in the ordinary criminal courts than for their appeals to be heard in SIAC with its provision for closed and hearsay evidence and special advocates. But the problem of disclosing informers’ evidence to the suspect and others in an ordinary court is then even greater: are the jury all to be security-cleared, as well as the judge and the counsel and others before the sensitive evidence is heard? And there’s still the central problem of disclosure to the suspect (or the accused) of information that will lead him back to the identity of the informer.

Similar (but to my mind much lesser) problems can arise where the main evidence against a suspect has been obtained by tapping a third party’s telephone. If that intercept evidence is revealed to the suspect, the third party will soon know that his phone has been tapped — and this may reveal to a whole terrorist group that their activities are known to the authorities, causing them to change their plans, stop using their telephones, and so forth.

It’s fine to reassert the principle that an accused person has the absolute right to know the evidence against him and to be able to challenge it in court. But how does one reconcile that principle with the equally absolute need to protect the identity of informers? I simply don’t know. I wonder if anyone else does, either. The SIAC procedures are designed to enable sensitive evidence to be withheld from the suspect while ensuring that his interests can be protected as far as possible by the special advocate who can challenge the closed evidence on his behalf. The SIAC judges themselves have to be satisfied that the evidence in question really does need to be ‘closed’, i.e. withheld from the suspect. It’s not satisfactory. But what alternative is better?