Belmarsh, control orders, deportation and extradition

For Babar Ahmad, the British citizen held for seven years fighting his planned extradition to the US to face terrorism charges that were found to be hollow when investigated in the UK, the realisation that an e-petition to the British government, asking for him to be tried in the UK and not extradited to the [...]

Please sign the petition! 100,000 signatures needed (current total: 52,000). Today has been designated National Babar Ahmad Day by his supporters. UPDATE November 2: Congratulations, everyone! 100,863 signatures! Well done to all those involved in this extraordinary campaign! On August 11, the family of Babar Ahmad launched an e-petition, calling on the UK government to put [...]

As the British government’s toothless torture inquiry is abandoned by ten NGOs and lawyers for the former Guantánamo prisoners, who have long recognized that it was nothing more than a whitewash, but have now given up on even trying to engage with it, politicians in the Tory-led coalition government are not the only ones feeling [...]

In a triumph for the principles of open justice, and a snub to the Tory-led coalition government, the British Supreme Court ruled unanimously on Wednesday that the government and the intelligence agencies cannot use secret evidence in court to prevent open discussion of allegations that prisoners were subjected to torture. The appeal, by lawyers for [...]

My friend Richard Haley, of Scotland Against Criminalising Communities (SACC), recently put me up for two nights in Edinburgh, during a visit as part of my ongoing tour of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo,” which I co-directed with filmmaker Polly Nash. Richard and I have known each other for many years [...]

“Now people are dying we’ve got nothing else to live for. What needs to happen is for the killing to stop. But that won’t happen until he [Gaddafi] is out. We just want to be able to live like human beings. Nothing will happen until protests really kick off in Tripoli, the capital. It’s like [...]

On Wednesday, Theresa May, the Home Secretary, informed the House of Commons about the results of the government’s extensive counter-terrorism review,  overseen by Ken Macdonald QC (Lord Macdonald), whose report, and the government’s response, is available here. The review confirms that, on many grounds, the government has, as promised, decided to defend aspects of civil [...]

With fortunate timing, an event is taking place tonight at Amnesty International’s Human Rights Action Centre in London, which sheds light on an unjust, but largely unexplored corner of the government’s counter-terrorism policies that was not mentioned in the policy changes announced yesterday by Home Secretary Theresa May. As I explain in a separate article [...]

A month ago, I wrote an article exploring how fault lines were opening up in the coalition government regarding control orders, a form of house arrest, depriving alleged “terror suspects” of most of their liberties on the basis of secret evidence, and without ever being charged or tried — or, for that matter, ever being [...]

Well, well. I’m not holding my breath, but the Observer‘s announcement on Sunday that “The scrapping of control orders for terror suspects moved a step closer last night when … senior Whitehall security sources broke ranks to reveal that MI5 was ‘not wedded’ to keeping the contentious regime” is promising. A form of virtual house [...]