Last night, the target was reached, which now means that Babar Ahmad’s case will be debated In Parliament, and is one of only five petitions to reach the 100,000 target required to ensure a Parliamentary debate. In seeking justice for Mr. Ahmad, the e-petition states, “In June 2011, the Houses of Parliament Joint Committee on Human Rights urged the UK government to change the law so that Babar Ahmad’s perpetual threat of extradition is ended without further delay. Since all of the allegations against Babar Ahmad are said to have taken place in the UK, we call upon the British Government to put him on trial in the UK and support British Justice for British Citizens.”

After exhausting all legal avenues in the UK, Babar Ahmad submitted an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights, which, as I explained in an article last week, Sign the Petition to the British Government: Prevent Babar Ahmad’s Extradition to the US, Put Him on Trial in the UK, delayed his extradition. In July 2010, the ECHR halted the extradition of Babar Ahmad and three other men — Abu Hamza al-Masri, Haroon Rashid Aswat and Talha Ahsan — and called for further submissions, after lawyers argued that, if they were convicted in the US, their conditions of confinement would be so severe that they would amount to a breach of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (PDF), which guarantees that no one will be “subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” Lawyers for the men argued that they would face life without parole (except Aswat, who faced a 50-year sentence), and that holding them in a “Supermax” prison, would contravene their rights, because prolonged isolation is a form of torture.

A final ruling by the European court is expected by the end of the year, but for now Babar Ahmad’s supporters deserve to be congratulated for their hard work over the last three months in promoting this petition and shifting the debate to Parliament, where it should have been discussed many years ago.

In response to the news, Babar Ahmad made the following statement from Long Lartin prison:

This is brilliant news. Thousands of ordinary people of all faiths and none, up and down the country have worked tirelessly day and night to achieve this significant victory. When you have gone through hell for over 7 years, you tend to lose your faith in humanity. This campaign shows that there are still good people left in this country. I would like to personally thank each and every one of these people and say to them, “May Allah remember you in your hour of need as you remembered me in my hour of need.” Although this is an amazing milestone, there is still alot of work left to be done and we need to keep on going.

From my own point of view, I wish to extend my thanks to everyone involved, for demonstrating that it is possible to motivate people in large numbers to address outstanding political and legal problems, and I also urge readers to continue pushing for signatures until the closing date of the petition, on November 10, as many of those submitted may be excluded on various grounds, and it would be unthinkable to fall at this last hurdle.

I also encourage people to think about contacting their MPS to follow up on the success of the petition, and encourage those who have worked so hard on this campaign to consider a similar campaign for Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in Guantánamo, who has been cruelly neglected by successive governments, and whose plight has never resonated sufficiently with the British public to secure the pressure to guarantee his return to his wife and family in Battersea after nearly ten years in Guantánamo.

Below is a press release issued by the Free Babar Ahmad campaign, to mark the success of the e-petition.

Celebrities Rally in Support of Babar Ahmad as over 100,000 sign E-Petition
Free Babar Ahmad, November 3, 2011

Over 100,000 people in Britain have now signed an official e-petition urging the government to put British detainee Babar Ahmad on trial in the UK, instead of extraditing him to the US.

The petition has been actively supported by a wide range of celebrities, including world boxing champion, Amir Khan, comedians Mark Thomas and Marcus Brigstocke, and actor Robert Llewellyn, who have been appalled by Ahmad’s ongoing detention without trial. He is now in his 8th year of detention, making him the longest detained-without-trial British citizen in the modern history of the UK.

Now that over 100,000 people have signed the petition, the matter becomes eligible for parliamentary debate.

The family of Babar Ahmad stated:

Our solicitors have prepared a fresh file of evidence to the Director of Public Prosecutions Keir Starmer proving that the CPS [Crown Prosecution Service] should have prosecuted Babar in 2004. Over 100,000 members of the British public now ask the DPP to confirm that he will instruct independent counsel to conduct an urgent full re-review of this case so that Babar Ahmad can be put on trial in the UK.

We also ask the coalition government to confirm that a full parliamentary debate will be held about Babar’s case with a view to putting him on trial in the UK.

Our family would like to thank every single person who either signed or supported this petition. We are overwhelmed by the amount of support for Babar’s case. This shows that the British public is still prepared to stand up against injustice. The government must now take a bold stance on this issue and stop sweeping it under the carpet like it has done for the last seven years.

A number of senior politicians and lawyers have also spoken out in support of the petition. The Rt. Hon. Sadiq Khan MP, Member of Parliament for Tooting, said:

The support for this e-petition has been phenomenal. Thousands of people feel very strongly about the Extradition Act in general, and Babar’s case in particular. I would like to pay tribute to Babar’s family for keeping this issue in the public’s mind. It is important that Parliament debates the matters raised in the petition. As Babar’s Member of Parliament, I have worked with his family and legal team for a number of years arguing that any trial should be held in the UK.

Baroness Sarah Ludford MEP called for Babar to “either be charged and tried here or released; his long and seemingly unending detention is a travesty of justice.”

Leading civil liberties lawyer Sir Geoffrey Bindman QC described Babar’s ongoing detention without trial as “extraordinary hardship,” adding that it would be “monstrous and scandalous if Babar Ahmad were extradited to the US.”

For further information or to arrange an interview, please email or telephone 07585 355581.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg and YouTube). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in June 2011, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and details about the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here — or here for the US). Also see my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

Please sign the petition!

On August 11, the family of Babar Ahmad launched an e-petition, calling on the UK government to put him on trial in the UK, and bring to an end his seven years of imprisonment without charge or trial in the UK, pending extradition to the US under the controversial Extradition Act of 2003, whereby the US government can demand the extradition of British citizens to face trials in the US without having to provide any evidence that there is a case to answer.

100,000 signatures are needed by November 10, to trigger an official request that Babar Ahmad be tried in the UK. As the petition explains: “In June 2011, the Houses of Parliament, Joint Committee on Human Rights urged the UK government to change the law so that Babar Ahmad’s perpetual threat of extradition is ended without further delay. Since all of the allegations against Babar Ahmad are said to have taken place in the UK, we call upon the British Government to put him on trial in the UK and support British Justice for British Citizens.”

For Babar Ahmad, accused of being involved, in the 1990s, with a website supporting fighters in Chechnya, the great irony is that the Americans’ case is based on the same allegations that failed to stand up to scrutiny in the UK. Ahmad was first arrested at his home in Tooting in December 2003, but was later released without charge, although he suffered 73 injuries as a result of the brutal treatment to which he was subjected at the time of his arrest, and was awarded £60,000 in damages in March 2009, when, as the Daily Telegraph reported:

Babar Ahmad offered no resistance when officers came to arrest him at his home in Tooting, south west London, in December 2003 but he was placed in a life-threatening neck hold, had his testicles pulled and was forced into a praying position while an officer shouted: “Where is your god now?” The arresting officers had been briefed that Ahmad, a 34-year-old married IT support analyst who had worked at Imperial College for six years, was believed to be connected to al-Qaeda and was the head of a south London terrorist group.

By the time he was awarded the damages, however, Ahmad had already been imprisoned, pending extradition to the US, for four years and seven months, as he was seized on behalf of the US government in August 2004, and has been held in Long Lartin prison ever since. Almost five years ago, on November 30, 2006, he lost his appeal against extradition at the High Court, and on June 4, 2007, the Law Lords refused to grant him leave to appeal. A week later, on June 10, 2007, the European Court of Human Rights accepted his appeal, and ordered the British government not to extradite him until that appeal had been considered.

In July 2010, the ECHR halted the extradition of Babar Ahmad and three other men — Abu Hamza al-Masri, Haroon Rashid Aswat and Talha Ahsan — and called for further submissions, after lawyers argued that, if they were convicted in the US, their conditions of confinement would be so severe that they would amount to a breach of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (PDF), which guarantees that no one will be “subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” Lawyers for the men argued that they would face life without parole (except Aswat, who faced a 50-year sentence), and that holding them in a “Supermax” prison, would contravene their rights, because prolonged isolation is a form of torture.

A ruling is expected by the end of the year, but for now, please sign the petition if you have not already done so, and please circulate the information widely, as, despite the considerable achievement to date, 48,000 more signatures are needed in the next two weeks. As the campaigner Maryam Hassan has noted, “We are not asking you to affirm his innocence or guilt, but simply to put him on trial in the UK.” And that, surely, cannot be too much to ask.

See below for the video, “Life is One Big Road – Put Babar Ahmad on Trial in the UK”:

Also, please read the following interview with Babar Ahmad, by Robert Verkaik of the Independent, which was published on July 8, 2010:

An Interview With Babar Ahmad

Robert Verkaik: Can you describe your life in the UK before your arrest?

Babar Ahmad: I was born in the UK and have spent all my life living in south London in the Balham/Tooting area. At the time of my first arrest in December 2003, I was employed full-time as an ICT Support Analyst at Imperial College London. My job entailed supporting the software needs of undergraduate academic teaching and postgraduate research. I have always been a devout Muslim and others would describe me as adhering to mainstream Islamic teachings. I have never been charged with or convicted of any criminal offence.

Robert Verkaik: Describe the conditions of your detention.

Babar Ahmad: I have been held in a number of prisons throughout the high-security estate since my arrest in 2004. I have been designated a category A prisoner. Initially, I was held on normal wings in prisons, alongside prisoners of all different categories. I was then moved to a small unit in HMP Long Lartin and held with other men fighting extradition or deportation. Over the last year and a half, the conditions of my detention have deteriorated. I spend all day, every day on a small unit with seven other prisoners. We are isolated from all other prisoners and all our time is spent in the claustrophobic atmosphere of a small unit. If I am extradited to the US, my conditions will deteriorate further. I face the possibility of life without parole in solitary confinement under the harshest of prison regimes in a Supermax prison, far from home, family and friends.

Robert Verkaik: What is the case against you?

Babar Ahmad: The central US allegations against me revolve around a family of websites that provided news in nearly 20 languages on Chechen resistance fighters who were defending their land against the Russian Army’s invasion of Chechnya in the 1990s. According to the US, this was terrorism [The Home Office says Mr Ahmad is accused of providing material support to terrorists]. But according to UK this was, and still is, legal as Chechen resistance fighters have never been proscribed as a terrorist organisation, unlike al-Qa’ida. In fact, the leader of the Chechen resistance has been living in the UK for several years, having been granted asylum.

The US claims jurisdiction because it is alleged that one of the several dozen computer servers on which the websites were hosted was located in the US for approximately 18 months from early 2000. The US accepts that the websites were also hosted on computer servers around the world and that “at all times material to the indictment” I was living in the UK. Other peripheral allegations against me are that a US naval battleship plan document was allegedly seized from me in December 2003. The media raised uproar about this document when I was arrested on the extradition warrant. However, in a letter to Sadiq Khan MP, the former Attorney-General Lord Goldsmith wrote that it could not even be proven that it was in my possession. Another document seized from my parents’ house was a tourist brochure (belonging to my father) of the Empire State Building in New York, which prompted the media to report “al-Qa’ida planned to attack Empire State Building”. That brochure is dated 1973, which is when my father visited New York. What is more incredible is that UK police returned this brochure to my father after I was arrested on the extradition warrant, yet it still forms part of the evidence against me.

Robert Verkaik: How were you tortured in the UK?

Babar Ahmad: On 2 December 2003, I was arrested in a pre-dawn raid by anti-terrorist police officers at my home in Tooting. During my arrest and subsequent journey to the police station, the officers subjected me to a “serious, prolonged and gratuitous attack” and “grave abuse tantamount to torture”, which left me with at least 73 physical injuries including bleeding in my ears and urine. I was held in custody for six days during which my home and office were searched, computers seized and analysed and I was questioned. On 8 December 2003 I was released without charge, after the CPS determined that there was no evidence to charge me with any criminal offence whatsoever. I believe that part of this decision was based on the fact that any future criminal trial would air embarrassing details of the abuse inflicted on me at my arrest.

Following my release I filed a formal complaint against the police and I gave several interviews describing my treatment. My case began to prove highly embarrassing to the Blair government.

Robert Verkaik: When were you re-arrested?

Babar Ahmad: After two months recovering from my injuries, I returned to work in February 2004 and tried to rebuild my life following my ordeal. On 5 August 2004, on my way home from work, I was re-arrested pursuant to an extradition warrant from the US under the controversial, no-evidence-required US-UK Extradition Treaty and taken to a high-security prison where I have remained ever since. To this day I have not even been questioned about the allegations against me.

Robert Verkaik: Why is the US Government so determined to see you face trial there?

Babar Ahmad: The question to ask is why has the Blair/Brown Government been so determined to extradite me? In my case there is documentary evidence to suggest that it is not the US that is really interested in me, but the Blair/Brown Government that has been determined to send me there at any cost. One only has to read the ferocious, lengthy representations that the Foreign Office has made to the European Court of Human Rights urging, almost begging, the Court to extradite me to the US. Their Herculean efforts eclipse those made by the US government itself.

Robert Verkaik: What message do you have for the Coalition Government in respect of your extradition?

Babar Ahmad: I have now been in prison fighting extradition for six years, which is the equivalent of a 12-year sentence. Whilst in prison I have outlived the the Blair/Brown Labour Government. To their credit, both the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives have steadfastly opposed this controversial UK-US Extradition Treaty and they have pledged, in their published Coalition Agreement, to modify it.

Note: For further information, please see the websites I Believe in Justice: British Justice for British Citizens and Free Babar Ahmad.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg and YouTube). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in June 2011, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and details about the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here — or here for the US). Also see my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

Describing the document as reportedly being “too sensitive to be publicly released at the government inquiry into the UK’s role in torture and rendition,” and as contributing to the decision by the NGOs and lawyers to boycott the inquiry because it does not have “credibility or transparency,” the Guardian explained how the secret policy “was operated by the British government for almost a decade,” and how it “instructed senior intelligence officers to weigh the importance of the information being sought must be balanced against ‘the level of mistreatment anticipated’ — the degree to which the prisoner or prisoners will suffer.”

The Guardian also explained how the document revealed the fears of the government and the intelligence agencies that they were breaking laws, as it “acknowledged that MI5 and MI6 officers could be in breach of both UK and international law by asking for information from prisoners held by overseas agencies known to use torture,” and also “explained the need to obtain political cover for any potentially criminal act by consulting ministers beforehand.”

The Guardian also described the history of the secret interrogation policy, explaining that it was first made available to MI5 and MI6 officers in Afghanistan in January 2002 so that they could “continue questioning prisoners whom they knew were being mistreated by members of the US military.” It was “amended slightly” later in 2002, and was then “rewritten and expanded in 2004″ after the government became concerned about the threat posed by British Muslims radicalized by the invasion of Iraq, and was “amended again in July 2006 during an investigation of a suspected plot to bring down airliners over the Atlantic.”

It was also noted that “separate policy documents were issued for related matters, including intelligence officers conducting face-to-face interrogations.”

In key passages, the 10-page document explains international and domestic laws regarding torture, and reiterates the explanation always provided by government officials when they were questioned about the use of torture — that MI5 and MI6 do not “participate in, encourage or condone the use of torture or inhuman or degrading treatment.” However, as the Guardian noted, this “blanket denial” failed to disclose that officials were actually “quoting from a document which offered MI5 and MI6 officers a means of extracting information from people being tortured.”

As the article proceeded to explain:

Intelligence officers were instructed not to carry out any action “which it is known” would result in torture. However, they could proceed when they foresaw “a real possibility their actions will result in an individual’s mistreatment” as long as they first sought assurances from the overseas agency.

Even when such assurances were judged to be worthless, officers could be given permission to proceed despite the real possibility that they would committing a crime and that a prisoner or prisoners would be tortured.

“When, not withstanding any caveats or prior assurances, there is still considered to be a real possibility of mistreatment and therefore there is considered to be a risk that the agencies’ actions could be judged to be unlawful, the actions may not be taken without authority at a senior level. In some cases, ministers may need to be consulted,” the document said.

In deciding whether to give permission, senior MI5 and MI6 management “will balance the risk of mistreatment and the risk that the officer’s actions could be judged to be unlawful against the need for the proposed action.”

At this point, “the operational imperative for the proposed action, such as if the action involves passing or obtaining life-saving intelligence” would be weighed against “the level of mistreatment anticipated and how likely those consequences are.”

Ministers may be consulted over “particularly difficult cases,” with the process of consulting being “designed to ensure that appropriate visibility and consideration of the risk of unlawful actions takes place.” All such operations must remain completely secret or they could put UK interests and British lives at risk.

The mention of “ministers” obviously suggests that this secret policy was well known to the most senior ministers in the Labour government, including Tony Blair, Jack Straw, David Blunkett and David Miliband, and the Guardian noted that disclosure of the contents of the document “appears to help explain the high degree of sensitivity shown by ministers and former ministers after the Guardian became aware of its existence two years ago,” explaining that Tony Blair “evaded a series of questions over the role he played in authorizing changes to the instructions in 2004″ (as discussed by the Guardian in June 2009, and also see my article here), and adding that former home secretary David Blunkett “maintained it was potentially libellous even to ask him questions about the matter,” and that David Miliband, when he was foreign secretary, told MPs that the secret policy could never be made public as “nothing we publish must give succour to our enemies.”

As the Guardian also noted, Tony Blair, David Blunkett and former foreign secretary Jack Straw all “declined to say whether or not they were aware that the instructions had led to a number of people being tortured.”

The intelligence agencies have long acknowledged that their work involves difficult choices involving the definition and use of torture, with Jonathan Evans, the head of MI5, claiming in a speech in October 2009 that his officers “would be derelict in their duty if they did not work with intelligence agencies in countries with poor human rights records,” and Sir John Sawers, the head of MI6, speaking about the “real, constant, operational dilemmas” involved in the UK’s relationships with dubious regimes.

The Guardian also wondered about the role of the Intelligence and Security Committee, who are involved with the oversight of the intelligence agencies, explaining that the Committee was “known to have examined the document while sitting in secret, but it is unclear what — if any — suggestions or complaints it made,” and also noted that Paul Murphy, the Labour MP who was the chair of the Committee in 2006, “declined to answer questions” about the document and the Committee’s scrutiny of it.

To my mind, however, the key phrase that emerged from the Guardian‘s article was delivered by Ken Macdonald, the Director of Public Prosecutions from 2003-08, who, in response to Jonathan Evans’ speech in October 2009, questioned whether “Tony Blair’s government was guilty of developing something close to a criminal policy” (emphasis added).

This policy — whether criminal or “close to” criminal — has affected dozens of British citizens and residents since the 9/11 attacks, as Ian Cobain has been reporting since 2008. These men are not only those who, like the British resident Binyam Mohamed, ended up at Guantánamo after being tortured in US custody in Pakistan, in Moroccan custody, and then in US custody in Afghanistan, with British knowledge of some, if not all of this 28-month period, but others whose cases are not generally as well known, and whose torture primarily involved the British and the security services of the countries they were seized in, and does not appear to have been specifically driven by the US.

Most of these cases have involved British citizens and residents stating that they were “questioned by MI5 and MI6 officers after being tortured by overseas intelligence officials” in countries including Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Egypt, Dubai, Morocco and Syria. Some, as the Guardian noted, “are known to have been detained at the suggestion of British intelligence officers,” while others were “interrogated on the basis of information that could only have been supplied by the UK.”

Moreover, some of the men were subsequently convicted of terrorism in a British court — with their torture allegations suppressed, in the case of Rangzieb Ahmed from Rochdale, who was convicted of “running an al-Qaida terror cell” and sentenced to life in December 2008 — while others were subjected to control orders (a form of house arrest, imposed on the basis of secret evidence).

Others resumed their lives, like Alam Ghafooor, who is “a businessman in Yorkshire,” Azhar Khan, who is “a software designer living in Berkshire,” and a third man, who is “a doctor practising on the south coast of England,” and, as the Guardian noted, “[s]ome have brought civil proceedings against the British government, and a number have received compensation in out-of-court settlements, but others remain too scared to take legal action.”

It is not known where these latest revelations will lead, although they will surely add to the pressure on the government to rethink its plans for an inquiry that has no support from NGOs, lawyer and former Guantánamo prisoners. As the Guardian also noted, the allegations that officers from MI5 and MI6 “committed criminal offences while extracting information from detainees overseas” has been the subject of a Metropolitan Police investigation, with detectives now conducting a “wider investigation into other potential criminal conduct.”

Interestingly, David Cameron conceded last July, when announcing the torture inquiry, that it cannot begin until the Metropolitan Police have concluded their investigation, and last week ITV News reported that “Scotland Yard detectives plan to interview prisoners at Guantánamo Bay as part of an investigation into a MI6 officer,” which “involves events at the Bagram US base in Afghanistan in January 2002.” As was explained on the ITV News blog, “Detectives from the Specialist Crime Directorate are trying to track down many of the nearly 50 prisoners who were at Bagram during that month,” because Scotland Yard detectives “want to establish whether a MI6 officer who was at the base broke British law after witnessing the way prisoners were treated.”

While this is a fascinating development — and ought to lead to renewed calls for the return to the UK of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in Guantánamo, who is the subject of part of the Metropolitan Police investigation, based on his allegations that a British agent witnessed his abuse at the hands of US agents in Afghanistan — the Guardian also questioned whether the replacement (PDF) for the “Agency policy on liaison with overseas security and intelligence services in relation to detainees who may be subject to mistreatment,” which was revised on the orders of David Cameron, on the grounds that the new government wished to give “greater clarity about what is and what is not acceptable in the future,” was actually adequate. It was noted that human rights groups have alleged that there are still “serious loopholes that could permit MI5 and MI6 officers to remain involved in the torture of prisoners overseas,” and that, just last week, the High Court “heard a challenge to the legality of the new instructions, brought by the Equality and Human Rights Commission,” with judgment expected later in the year.

In light of the Guardian‘s revelation of this document, Eric Metcalfe, the director of human rights policy at JUSTICE, the all-party law reform and human rights organization, wrote an article today for the Guardian‘s Comment is free, in which he summed up the problems for the government (the current one, as well as the former one) and the intelligence services that were revealed along with the leaked report.

“Torture,” Metcalfe confirms, “was something the previous government would never knowingly condone or be complicit in,” However, “when it came to situations in which the government did not know for certain, or did not especially want to, all bets were, apparently, off.” As Metcalfe proceeded to ask:

Would you risk someone being waterboarded in a foreign country for a week if you thought it might save 10 British lives? What if you thought it might save only one life, but you were not really sure? What would that be worth? Waterboarding for a day? The secret government policy uncovered in Ian Cobain’s story on Thursday does not set things out in such crude terms, but it is the kind of grotesque utilitarian calculus that is invited by its bland references to “balancing the risk of mistreatment” against “operational imperatives.”

And although the policy may have changed, officially, it is hard to imagine that, in the corridors of power, when a supposed threat is highlighted in missives from foreign allies known for using torture, anything has changed. Those words — “balancing the risk of mistreatment” against “operational imperatives” — strike me as exactly the kind of language that David Cameron and other ministers will be using with senior officials in the intelligence agencies, just as happened with the previous government.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg and YouTube). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in June 2011, details about the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, on tour in the UK throughout 2011, and available on DVD here — or here for the US), my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

The appeal, by lawyers for MI5 — but with the explicit backing of the government — sought to overturn a ruling in the Court of Appeal last May, when judges ruled that the intelligence services could not suppress allegations, in a civil claim for damages submitted by six former Guantanamo prisoners, that the British government and its agents had been complicit in their ill-treatment. The six are Bisher al-Rawi, Jamil el-Banna, Richard Belmar, Omar Deghayes, Binyam Mohamed and Martin Mubanga, and they argued, as the Guardian put it, that “MI5 and MI6 aided and abetted their unlawful imprisonment and extraordinary rendition.”

The ruling last May precipitated a huge crisis in the government, as the first of hundreds of thousands of classified documents emerged from the court, revealing the extent to which Tony Blair and Jack Straw were up to their necks in wrongdoing, preventing consular access to a British citizen in Zambia, in Tony Blair’s case, and in Straw’s, approving the rendition of British citizens to Guantanamo the day before the prison opened in January 2002. I covered this story in detail in my article, UK Sought Rendition of British Nationals to Guantánamo; Tony Blair Directly Involved.

As a result, ministers scrambled over each other in their rush to shut down further damaging leaks from the court by arranging for the former prisoners to accept compensation claims in exchange for dropping the civil claim for damages, persuading them that they would not be able to afford to proceed with their case if they did not accept the offer.

The settlement was announced in November, but the government immediately responded not with a dignified silence, which would have been appropriate as they wheedled their way out of the court-ordered release of evidence of complicity in torture at the highest levels of government, but with a provocative announcement by justice secretary Kenneth Clarke, who chose the very moment that the payments were announced to also announce that, in future, the work of Britain’s security services would be “permanently hidden from court hearings,” as the Guardian explained.

Kenneth Clarke told MPs that a government green paper, supposedly to be published this summer, would “contain specific proposals designed to prevent the courts from releasing the kind of information that has emerged from recent Guantánamo cases in the English courts.” A Whitehall official told the Guardian, “It will absolutely eliminate [the possibility of] the process happening again.”

The Guardian also explained that ministers had been “convinced by MI5 and MI6 that disclosing information held by the security and intelligence agencies — and notably information provided by foreign agencies such as the CIA –compromises Britain’s national security,” and that, as a result, they were planning to use a secret evidence and the system of speoial advocates, used in domestic terrorism cases, which has alarmed believers in open justice for many years.

To introduce secret evidence into the courts for cases involving domestic terror suspects, the government set up a ludicrous situation whereby special advocates are appointed to represent defendants in closed sessions in which secret evidence is discussed, but they are unable then to discuss anything that they see or hear with their clients, tying their hands and conjuring up the spirit of Franz Kafka, as I have discussed at length in previous articles — see, for example, Britain’s Guantánamo: Calling For An End To Secret Evidence, Calling Time On The Use Of Secret Evidence In The UK, Control Orders: Solicitors’ Evidence before the Joint Committee on Human Rights, February 3, 2010 and Control Orders: Special Advocates’ Evidence before the Joint Committee on Human Rights, February 3, 2010.

In the cases of British nationals and foreign nationals held on control orders (a form of house arrest) on the basis of secret evidence, the Law Lords — the precursors to the Supreme Court — ruled in June 2009 that the system of secret evidence and special advocates infringed the men’s right to a fair trial under Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, so it was alarming that the government wanted to expand this system as a blanket ban on any future discussion of wrongdoing on the part of the security services.

The appeal that was decided by the Supreme Court on Wednesday was essentially testing the waters for the new proposals regarding secret evidence and the security services, and, a a result, the government’s plans are thoroughly discredited. See here for the judgment (120 pages, PDF), and see here for a brief summary issued by the Court.

Delivering the judgment, Lord Dyson said, “There are certain features of a common law trial which are fundamental to our system of justice, both criminal and civil. First, subject to certain established and limited exceptions, trials should conducted and judgments given in public. The importance of the open justice principle emphasised many times. The open justice principle is not a mere procedural rule. It is a fundamental common law principle.”

“Secondly,” Lord Dyson stated, “trials are conducted on the principle of natural justice,” and he warned that allowing a “closed procedure” in “an ill-defined way” could “be the thin end of the wedge,” adding, “This would be a big step for the law to take in view of the fundamental principles at stake. In my view this is a matter for parliament and not the courts.”

Lord Hope also had some powerful advice for the government, and a stirring defense of the law. “There comes a point,” he said, “where the line must be drawn between procedural choices which are regulatory only and procedural choices that affect the very substance of the notion of a fair trial. Choices that cut across absolutely fundamental principles — such as the right to be confronted by one’s accusers and the right to know the reasons for the outcome — are entirely different. The court has for centuries held the line as the guardian of these fundamental principles.”

He added, “Any weakening in the face of advances in the methods and use of secret intelligence in a case such as this would be bound to lead to attempts to widen the scope for an exception to be made to the principle of open justice.”

As the Guardian explained, Lord Brown warned that cases involving closed procedures “would mean that claims concerning allegations of complicity, torture and the like by UK intelligence services abroad would be heard in proceedings from which the claimants were excluded, with secret defences they could not see, secret evidence they could not challenge, and secret judgments withheld from them and from the public for all time.”

Lord Kerr added that, under the proposals put forward by the security services, “all the material goes before the judge and a claim that all of it involves national security or some other vital public interest will be very tempting to make.”

However, although the decision is “a significant victory for open justice,” as the Guardian explained, the nine judges “pointed out that parliament could change the law to permit such ‘closed material procedures’ in future.”

That should not be necessary, as, in the Supreme Court’s judgment, all nine judges “rejected the security service’s main submission that a court has a common law power to order a closed material procedure as an alternative to the more conventional public interest immunity (PII) certificate,” as the Guardian put it. They argued that such a power “would contravene fundamental and long-established principles of open and natural justice.”

If there is any valid area for discussion, it is with the “mission creep” of a secondary proposal by the security services –  that “a court has a common law power to order a closed material procedure as an add-on to a conventional PII in certain exceptional cases.” When pushed on fundamental problems with their cavalier attitude to the law as it relates to the perceived threat of terrorism, governments have tended to resort to introducing their dangerous innovations in “exceptional cases,”and as a result it is worth keeping a close eye on how the government responds to this particular point.

Nevertheless, this is, in general, a judgment to be savoured, and confirmation, yet again, that British judges are capable of maintaining their independence, despite intense political pressure, when it comes to dealing with issues involving terrorism and “national security.” In response to the judgment, Eric Metcalfe, of the all-party law reform group JUSTICE, which was involved in the case, said, “The ruling has confirmed that secret evidence has no place in the common law. It is a clear setback for the government’s plans to extend the use of secret evidence and secret hearings in our courts. Although it is open to parliament to legislate further, today’s ruling sets a high hurdle for any MP seeking to cut across centuries of common law tradition.”

Let us hope that Eric Metcalfe is correct, and, if not, that those of us who have had enough secrecy and complicity in torture in the last ten years, can say to Parliament that enough is enough, and that we do not want the expansion of the secrecy state, and do not want politicians and the intelligence services to have new opportunities to hide their wrongdoing under the feeble guise of “national security.”

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg and YouTube). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in June 2011, details about the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, on tour in the UK throughout 2011, and available on DVD here — or here for the US), my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

I’m delighted to do so, as this is a very informative interview with a tireless campaigner for justice, exploring several topics, including the alleged US whistleblower Bradley Manning and Julian Assange of Wikileaks, but focusing largely on the new “Stop Isolation” website, which I wrote about here, and which Richard explains was launched “because the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) is considering the appeals of four British citizens — Babar Ahmad, Syed Tahla Ahsan, Haroon Rashid Aswat, and Abu Hamza — against extradition to the US to face terrorism charges. The court is considering whether the length of the sentences the men may face and the risk of long-term isolation at ADX Florence (for three of the men) would breach their right under Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights not to ‘be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.’ The court’s long-delayed judgment is expected in the next few months. It will be a landmark in the development of human rights law.”

Please visit the Angola 3 News website (also see here) for detailed information about the long-running campaign to secure justice for two of the three men still wrongly imprisoned in Louisiana after 38 years, and for those who are new to their case, a brief history is below:

38 years ago, deep in rural Louisiana, three young black men — Herman Wallace, Robert King, and Albert Woodfox — were silenced for trying to expose continued segregation, systematic corruption, and horrific abuse in the biggest prison in the US, an 18,000 acre former slave plantation called Angola.

Peaceful, non-violent protest in the form of hunger and work strikes organized by inmates caught the attention of Louisiana’s elected leaders and local media in the early 1970s. They soon called for investigations into a host of unconstitutional and extraordinarily inhumane practices commonplace in what was then the “bloodiest prison in the South.” Eager to put an end to outside scrutiny, prison officials began punishing inmates they saw as troublemakers. At the height of this unprecedented institutional chaos, Herman Wallace, Albert Woodfox, and Robert King were charged with murders they did not commit and thrown into 6×9 foot solitary cells.

Robert was released in 2001, but Herman and Albert remain in solitary, continuing to fight for their freedom.

War, Prisons and Torture in the US and UK: An interview with Richard Haley
By Angola 3 News, March 5, 2011

Richard Haley is based in Edinburgh, Scotland. He has been active in Britain’s anti-war movement since 2003. He is a member of the Stop the War Coalition and is currently Chair of Scotland Against Criminalising Communities.

Last December, on Human Rights Day, Scotland Against Criminalising Communities initiated a “Stop Isolation” campaign with an online statement arguing that solitary confinement is a form of torture that must be abolished. The petition states that “We call upon the countries of the world to enact legislation that prohibits long-term prisoner isolation, and prohibits the transfer of prisoners to countries where they would be at risk of such treatment. Dungeons should not be tolerated in the 21st century.”

Angola 3 News: Can you please tell us about your organization Scotland Against Criminalising Communities (SACC)? In Scotland, which communities are being criminalized?

Richard Haley: SACC began as a group of Scottish-based anti-war activists who came together in the first months of 2003 after the arrest of 7 Algerian men on terrorism charges. The arrests were accompanied by an intimidating police trawl for information throughout the Algerian community in Scotland. The arrests got spectacular publicity, leading to a surge in racist incidents against Muslims. So our initial work was to counter these things. We soon saw that there was no evidence against the Algerians. The charges were dropped at the end of the year, after the maximum delay permitted under Scottish law.

Since 9/11 the community most conspicuously criminalized in Scotland has been the Muslim community. At first the focus was on Muslim refugees and immigrants, but later it widened to include British citizens. Muslims are the targets of official suspicion and are at risk of prosecution for activities that would once have been legitimate but are now called “terrorism.” Muslim institutions — mosques and various community groups — are subject to state supervision, surveillance and interference.

The legal machinery for this is a series of anti-terrorism laws introduced over the last decade. Scotland has its own devolved Parliament, but anti-terrorism legislation is the responsibility of the British Parliament. Our group joined the London-based Campaign Against Criminalising Communities in calling for the repeal of all Britain’s terrorism legislation. The Stop the War Coalition — the main group in Britain opposing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — also shares our opposition to the attack on civil liberties. We work with other groups to campaign for prisoners of the “war on terror” throughout Britain and, in some instances, around the world.

Others besides Muslims have been criminalized. Kurdish and Tamil communities have been particular targets. The Kurdish separatist group PKK and the Tamil separatist group LTTE (“Tamil Tigers”) are both banned under anti-terrorism legislation, although neither has carried out armed actions outside its homeland. Both groups enjoy wide sympathy in their respective communities in Britain, and community political and social activities reflect that. The banning of the groups has an effect on all that activity.

Angola 3 News: Along with focusing on prisons, the SACC website spotlights a range of issues, including the war being waged against Iraq by the US and UK. How do these two issues (prisons and war) relate to each other?

Richard Haley: The arrests of the Algerian men in Scotland occurred while the British Government was getting ready to join the US in its invasion of Iraq. Terrorism cases were being massaged or manufactured to create a heightened fear of terrorism and make people more receptive to the argument that the risk of a link between terrorists and Saddam Hussein’s regime made the invasion of Iraq necessary.

Besides the arrests in Scotland, a number of Algerian men were arrested on suspicion of involvement in a plot to disseminate ricin poison. The supposed discovery of ricin was announced by the Metropolitan Police in January 2003. Prime Minister Tony Blair told a meeting of British ambassadors that the danger was “present and real” and that its potential was “huge.” US Secretary of State Colin Powell included the discovery in his 6 February presentation to the UN Security Council in which he set out the US case for war with Iraq. But by the time that Tony Blair and Colin Powell made their statements, the British Government’s Porton Down laboratory had already established that no ricin had been found. This wasn’t widely known until the ricin case came to trial in 2005. Four of the five accused were acquitted on all charges; one man was found guilty of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance. The story of the ricin plot is told in the book, Ricin! The Inside Story of the Terror Plot that Never Was by Lawrence Archer and Fiona Bawdon (Pluto Press, 2010).

The danger of terrorism, coupled with the hypothetical possibility of a link to the Iraqi regime, formed part of the British Government’s case to Parliament in the crucial March 2003 debate that authorized the invasion of Iraq. Terrorism couldn’t provide a legal justification for the war, but it went a long way towards persuading MPs to acquiesce in the flimsy legal justifications that were offered.

There are structural links between prisons and war. The so-called “war on terror” is at the moment focused on Afghanistan and Pakistan rather than Iraq. Whatever its location, it is a war for resources and power. It is imperialist and racist and necessarily involves the denial of human rights. Since Britain is a multi-ethnic country and our population has religious, cultural and family ties to the theatres of war, the denial of rights necessarily extends to Britain. Prison walls obstruct solidarity and promote fear.

Angola 3 News: Looking at the “Stop Isolation” statement published online last December, why did SACC choose to focus on the issue of solitary confinement at this present time? As signatures collect, will you be submitting it to anyone in the form of a petition?

Richard Haley: We call “Stop Isolation” a statement rather than a petition because it isn’t particularly directed towards being handed in somewhere. It is available on the internet for anyone — government or activist — to see. We may in due course post a copy to the justice ministers of a selection of countries. But we intend the statement to stand for as long as necessary as a rallying point for people who want to work together while putting pressure on their governments to end long-term prisoner isolation. “Stop Isolation” is independent of other campaigns that SACC supports. We hope to keep expanding the website to include more news and background from around the world.

We launched “Stop Isolation” because the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) is considering the appeals of four British citizens — Babar Ahmad, Syed Tahla Ahsan, Haroon Rashid Aswat, and Abu Hamza — against extradition to the US to face terrorism charges. The court is considering whether the length of the sentences the men may face and the risk of long-term isolation at ADX Florence (for three of the men) would breach their right under Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights not to “be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” The court’s long-delayed judgment is expected in the next few months. It will be a landmark in the development of human rights law.

The ECHR is the last legal recourse for human rights appeals by people in the 47 member states of the Council of Europe–a grouping that is wider and distinct from the European Union. If the court blocks the men’s extradition it will send a signal to the US that the harshness of the US penal system is damaging its international relations. On the other hand, a ruling in favor of extradition could open the door to harsher prison conditions in Europe. In either case the challenge to human rights campaigners will be the same — we will need a vigorous international campaign against prisoner isolation.

The charges against the four men are different, but all the cases are marred by a range of worrying issues, in addition to the matters that the ECHR has agreed to consider. Some of the problems stem from Britain’s Extradition Act 2003, which allows people to be extradited to the US without any need for prima facie evidence to be presented. US lawmakers have wisely failed to ratify the treaty that would create reciprocal arrangements for extradition from the US to Britain. Some of the British opposition to the Extradition Act has stressed the loss of sovereignty that it entails and the lack of balance created by the US position. But sovereignty and balance aren’t the real issues. The real problem is that evidence-free extradition promotes injustice. For more background, see lawyer Gareth Peirce’s article in the London Review of Books.

Angola 3 News: Can you tell us more about these four British citizens?

Richard Haley: Two of the men — Babar Ahmad and Syed Tahla Ahsan — have become particular friends of SACC over the years that it has taken for their appeals to reach the ECHR. Their cases are closely linked to one another. They relate to the men’s alleged support — largely by means of the internet — for groups in Chechnya and Afghanistan over the period 1997-2004. The offences were all allegedly committed while the men were in Britain. Talha Ahsan has never visited the US. The evidence against the men has never been presented to a British court. Both men say that they should be tried in Britain. British prosecutors say they don’t have enough evidence to do so.

Babar Ahmad has become very widely known amongst Muslims in Britain. His arrest marked the moment when British Muslims, as well as refugees and immigrants, began to feel threatened by the state. Babar was subjected to a serious and unprovoked assault by police officers during and after his initial arrest at his London home in December 2003. Much later (while in jail) he won a lawsuit against the police over his ill-treatment. He was released without charge six days after his initial arrest, but was arrested again 8 months later on an extradition request from the US. He has been held in high-security jails ever since. There is more information on his case on the website Free Babar Ahmad and on the SACC website.

Talha Ahsan was arrested in London in July 2006 following an extradition request from the US and has been held in high-security jails ever since. The cases against both Babar Ahmad and Talha Ahsan rely on evidence seized by British police during their violent raid on Babar Ahmad’s home, and then passed to the US.

A booklet entitled This be the Answer: Prison Poems by Talha Ahsan, has just been published [and is available here for £3, inc. P&P] and includes more background about his case. The Free Talha Ahsan website has also just been launched.

If the four men are sent to the US, they are sure to be accompanied by damaging publicity. They will need all the support they can get if they are to stand a chance of a fair trial. Readers can find contact details for Babar Ahmad and Talha Ahsan on the SACC website. I’m sure that both men would be delighted to receive letters from the US.

We also need the support of US readers for our campaign against prisoner isolation. Spread the word about the “Stop Isolation” statement and website. Encourage people to add their names to the statement. Use it when campaigning for individual prisoners. Send “Stop Isolation” any news that might be of interest (contact details here). Tell your representatives on Capitol Hill about it. The statement is supported by senior legal and human rights figures around the world. Their support shows that the US is out of step with international best practice on this issue.

Angola 3 News: Why do you think that the use of solitary confinement is so widespread? Why do governments choose to use it as a form of punishment?

Richard Haley: Because they can.

Because prison authorities often believe that it is absolutely necessary to make prisoners conform, whatever the human cost.

Because solitary confinement is imposed on people who are in prison and lack easy access to legal remedy or public support.

Torturers often prefer methods that don’t leave obvious marks. Solitary confinement is one such method. It is often thought to be near the margin of the practices prohibited under human rights law. So governments can use it to flex their muscles and to stimulate reactionary sentiment without colliding with international law and its enforcement mechanisms. I hope the “Stop Isolation” statement will make that harder to do.

Angola 3 News: Why do you think torture itself is a tactic used by governments?

Richard Haley: Anti-torture campaigners often say that torture doesn’t work. They mean that torture doesn’t yield reliable information, and of course they are right. But torture has worked very well for thousands of years to help rulers dominate the ruled. The recent uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt happened when torture stopped working. Our job is to stop torture working. Eradicating it will then be easy.

Angola 3 News: How often is solitary used in Europe? How does the European use of solitary contrast with how the US uses it?

Richard Haley: Prison Governors in Scotland may authorize segregation for a maximum of 72 hours. The period can be extended for a month at a time by Scottish Ministers or by officials to whom ministers delegate responsibility.

A lawsuit brought by a group of prisoners over their solitary confinement came to court in 2004. There were at that time 63 prisoners in segregation units in Scotland out of a prison population of a little under 7000. The litigants complained of episodes of segregation that had in some cases occurred some years previously. Several of them had been placed in segregation cells for periods of around five months. Another prisoner — not one of these bringing the lawsuit — was known at that time to have been in solitary for 18 months.

The Scottish Prison Service settled with the prisoners in 2009. Regrettably, the service insisted that it had settled “purely on economic grounds” and that it did not accept that the segregation of the prisoners had been unlawful. An inspection of Perth prison in 2009 found that 2 prisoners had been held in segregation for “more than a month.” A 2007 inspection of Kilmarnock Prison found that one prisoner had been in segregation for 5 months and another for 3 months. Inspections of some other Scottish prisons in recent years have reported that segregation cells were rarely used.

In England and Wales punitive solitary confinement can be imposed on adults for a maximum of 28 days. Prisoners can be segregated without time limit to preserve “good order and discipline” or for their own protection. Their segregation is subject to frequent review.

The use of solitary confinement varies across Europe. The European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT) has wide powers to visit and inspect prisons in the 47 member states of the Council of Europe. It says that “all forms of solitary confinement should be as short as possible.” Some European states have chosen not to publish the CPT’s reports on their country, as is their right. For example, no reports on CPT visits to the Russian Federation have ever been published.

Since 1999, Turkey has been holding PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan in a specially built prison on the island of Imrali. For 10 years he was its sole inmate. The CPT visited the prison in 2007 and subsequently recommended that Öcalan should “be integrated into a setting where contacts with other inmates and a wider range of activities are possible.” In November 2009 the Turkish authorities transferred several other prisoners to Imrali to alleviate Öcalan’s isolation. Turkey has a very poor human rights record and Öcalan is its most notorious prisoner; it nevertheless felt unable to maintain his isolation.

Solitary confinement for periods of several years or more is very rare in Europe. Solitary confinement for periods of many months is generally unusual. Supermax-style conditions are almost certainly very rare or absent.

The use of solitary confinement is much more restricted by judicial process and legally-empowered monitoring in Europe than in the US. But I know of no Europe-wide survey of solitary confinement, so the picture of European practice is a very tentative and provisional one.

Angola 3 News: What strategies are European activists using to influence policy, that might be useful in the US?

Richard Haley: I think that European activists may have more to learn from US activists than vice versa. From here, it looks as if prison activism in the US is much wider, deeper and more politicized in the US than in Britain.

Excellent work is being done here by Paddy Hill and John McManus at Miscarriages of Justice Organisation Scotland. Paddy Hill is one of the Birmingham 6. He spent 16 years in prison after being wrongly convicted of the 1974 Irish Republican bombings in Birmingham.

Excellent work is also being done by Cageprisoners. Former Guantánamo prisoner Moazzam Begg is one of its directors.

Angola 3 News: With recent revelations that Bradley Manning is also a citizen of the UK, SACC is calling for the British government to intervene. Can you please tell us more about this? Has there been a response yet from the British government?

Richard Haley: It turns out that Bradley Manning’s mother is Welsh, so he is a British citizen as well as a US citizen. Britain normally offers only informal help to dual nationals detained in the country of their other nationality, but it makes formal representations where there are human rights issues. There are obviously human rights concerns for Bradley Manning, but the British government has so far given no help. A number of Members of Parliament have told constituents that they are concerned over this, but they haven’t yet had a response from the Government. British Members of the European Parliament have also expressed an interest. So we’ll be trying to keep the pressure up. There is more information on the “UK Friends of Bradley Manning” website.

If the allegations against Bradley Manning are true, we are indebted to him for helping to reveal what the war in Iraq was really like. Whether the allegations are true or not, his isolation in Quantico Brig puts him under pressure to incriminate himself and Julian Assange.

Manning and Assange both need support; support for either of them will make both stronger. Assange is pinned down dealing with allegations of sex crimes in Sweden. The US authorities are meanwhile trying to find a formula that will let them charge him without threatening the traditional media. The worldwide media have helped the US government tremendously by distancing themselves from Assange. Journalists who collude in this should be ashamed of themselves.

Britain’s extradition court has unsurprisingly ducked the chance to see justice done over Sweden’s request for Assange to be extradited there. The Chief Magistrate, Howard Riddle, ruled on 24 February that the extradition can go ahead. To rule otherwise wouldn’t just have meant standing in the path of the juggernaut bearing down on WikiLeaks. It would also have shone a spotlight on the operation of the already-controversial European Arrest Warrant. The warrants came into effect in August 2003 and allow extradition with minimal legal oversight between the various radically different jurisdictions within the European Union. Like the arrangements for extradition from Britain to the US, the system is an open invitation to injustice.

Riddle has accepted that Assange will be held incommunicado in prison in Sweden and will then be interrogated, held without bail and eventually tried in secret. But he held that these facts should not stand in the way of Assange’s extradition. Assange’s lawyer Mark Stephens says that, though Sweden’s penal system has some progressive features, the country is a “human rights black spot in relation to solitary confinement.” Stephens argues that extradition proceedings should not be a rubber-stamp but should instead be a tool to “improve the quality of justice throughout Europe” and eliminate “human rights blind spots.” This is exactly the approach that SACC has long been advocating.

If the larger issues of Julian Assange’s case are to be dealt with, it will be in a more elevated forum than the extradition court. Assange will appeal to the High Court and, if unsuccessful, may then appeal to Britain’s Supreme Court and then to the European Court of Human Rights. Even these courts are only likely to stand up for justice and against state interests if public opinion demands it.

Riddle said in his 24 February ruling: “sometimes public comment damages the cause more than it helps.” He was referring to comments made on the steps of the court last year by Assange’s lawyer. Assange’s legal team may get a rough ride. If they do, it won’t be the first time that Britain’s legal establishment has tried to keep an inconvenient lawyer quiet. In 2006, Scottish lawyer Aamer Anwar was accused of contempt of court after speaking out against the conviction of his client Mohammed Atif Siddique on terrorism charges. Campaigners rallied in Anwar’s support, the contempt charges were thrown out by three high court judges and the appeal court in Edinburgh eventually ruled that Siddique had suffered a miscarriage of justice. People must be ready to give Julian Assange’s lawyers the same sort of robust support that we in Scotland gave to Aamer Anwar.

Amy Jeffress, the US justice department’s attaché to the American embassy in London, has dismissed concerns that Julian Assange could be at risk of detention at Guantánamo Bay if re-extradited from Sweden to the US. She told the BBC radio program Law in Action: “The President, of course, has decided to close Guantánamo Bay and so no one is going to Guantánamo Bay and that claim is baseless.”

But Obama’s deadline for closing Guantánamo expired over a year ago. His handling of the issue has shown the whole world that the White House has neither the will nor the authority to guarantee respect for human rights in the United States.

Angola 3 News: Anything else to add?

Richard Haley: The world is shrinking. Law-enforcement and intelligence agencies around the world cooperate closely on matters they say are related to terrorism. They use extradition, rendition and the opportunistic torture of people who travel to countries whose governments can get away with it. Too often, the human rights standards that count are the lowest ones. We need to work together so that we all benefit instead from the highest standards.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook and Twitter). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in July 2010, details about the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, on tour in the UK throughout 2011, and available on DVD here), my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

These are the words of a young woman in Libya — a student , a blogger and a member of the youth protest movement in Libya that is part of a growing uprising against the tyrannical 41-year reign of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. Speaking to the Guardian by phone from her home on the outskirts of Benghazi, the eastern city where the revolution in Libya began just six days ago, and where hundreds of protestors have been killed by Gaddafi’s security forces, she said, “I’ve seen violent movies and video games that are nothing compared to this. I can hear gunshots, helicopters circling overhead, then I hear the voices screaming. I can hear the screeching of four-by-fours in the street. No one has that type of car except his [Gaddafi's] people. My brother went to get bread, he’s not back; we don’t know if he’ll get back. The family is up all night every night, keeping watch, no one can sleep.”

Described by the Guardian as “an expert in subverting net censorship,” who “had regularly posted messages online to gather support” for the protests that began last week, the student explained how, since the uprising began, “her internet connection is down, landlines cut off, mobile coverage interrupted, electricity sporadically cut off and the house plunged into darkness.” She added, “There are even stories here that he [Gaddafi] has poisoned the water, so we dare not drink. If he could cut off the air that we breathe, he would.”

Unlike the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, where there was remarkably litle bloodshed, and the dictators Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak fell from power through the pressure of sheer numbers, there are no signs that Colonel Gaddafi has any intention of relinquishing power without a bloody fight. As the Guardian also reported, sources close to his family told the Saudi paper al-Sharq al-Awsat, “We will all die on Libyan soil,” and it appears that the brutal suppression of the uprising in Benghazi is being led by one of his sons, Khamis, described as “the Russian-trained commander of an elite special forces unit,” and that another of Gaddafi’s sons, Saadi, is also present, along with Abdullah al-Senussi, the regime’s long-standing head of military intelligence.

For those familiar with Libyan history, the brutal response to the uprising is typical, demonstrating what experts told the Guardian was Gaddafi’s “instinctive brutality when faced with challenges to his rule.” The London-based writer and activist Ashour Shamis explained, “For Gaddafi it’s kill or be killed. Now he’s gone straight for the kill.”

In the 1980s, as the Guardian explained, Gaddafi “sent hit squads to murder exiled ‘stray dogs’” who challenged his dictatorship, and throughout the 1990s he crushed Islamist opposition — and any other political opposition — at home, most notoriously instigating a massacre of at least a thousand prisoners in Abu Salim prison in Tripoli in June 1996, as I reported in an article in 2009, entitled, UK protestors mark 13th anniversary of Libyan prison massacre.

An adept survivor, Gaddafi came onside in the “War on Terror” after the 9/11 attacks, prompting the most miserably transparent examples of hypocrisy on the part of Western nations, as their leaders queued up to welcome the former pariah as an ally, and barely managed to disguise their excitement at having access to Libya’s rich oil reserves.

In ingratiating themselves with the dictator, both the US and the UK willingly abandoned former opponents of the regime, who had, until then, been regarded as victims of oppression. The US willingly rounded up exiled Libyans in Afghanistan and Pakistan, sending them to Guantanamo and labeling them as “enemy combatants.” Two of these men eventually accepted voluntary repatriation from Guantanamo, but both were imprisoned on their return, and only one of the two, Abu Sufian Hamouda (transferred in October 2007), has been released, while the other, Muhammad al-Rimi (transferred in December 2006), is still held in Abu Salim.

Both of these men are, however, more fortunate than Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, the emir of a training camp in Afghanistan, who was rendered by the CIA to Egypt after his capture in Afghanistan in December 2001, where, under torture, he falsely confessed that two al-Qaeda operatives had been meeting with Saddam Hussein to discuss the use of chemical and biological weapons. Although al-Libi recanted his tortured lie, it was used to justify the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, and after al-Libi had been moved around various other secret prisons, he was returned to Libya, where he conveniently died, reportedly by committing suicide, in May 2009, just three days before the US reopened its embassy in Tripoli.

In the UK, meanwhile, Libyan asylum seekers, who had found themselves welcomed as refugees from the terrorist-supporting dictator Gaddafi, suddenly discovered that they had been designated as “terror suspects,” and were imprisoned without charge or trial pending deportation.

When judges went off-script, refusing to allow the government to return any of these men, and ruling that the “diplomatic assurances” agreed between Gaddafi and the UK government, which purported to guarantee that they would be treated humanely, were worthless, the men were then held on control orders, an oppressive form of house arrest that, like the deportation regime, involved them being held without charge or trial on the basis of secret evidence.

After the Law Lords — following the lead of the European Court of Human Rights — ruled in June 2009 that the control order regime breaches Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees the right to a fair trial, the Libyans had their control orders dropped, either because the disclosure of any information would have demonstrated that they were pawns in a deeply cynical game, or because their liberty was now useful to Gaddafi, who, at the time, was brokering a deal with former political opponents, whereby they would left unmolested if they renounced violence.

As the unrest in Libya spreads to the capital, Tripoli, the Gaddafi regime continues to respond with brute force, using planes to fire on protestors. Whether they can prevail against a people who are overcoming their fear in vast numbers and are apparently prepared to die in an attempt to secure their freedom remains to be seen, but the regime is clearly under threat. Last night, another of Gaddafi’s sons, Saif al-Islam, the supposed moderate and reformer of the family, embraced by Western hypocrites as a sign of the way forward, was wheeled out to deliver an incoherent speech on TV that was full of threats, hyperbole and lies.

Although he conceded that it was a “tragedy” that Libyans had died and stated, “There were some planning errors,” including “Errors from the police … and the army that was not equipped and prepared to confront angry people and … to defend its premises, weapons and ammunition,” he also warned apocalyptically of “civil war” unless order was restored, telling the TV audience that his father was still in the country and that the regime had the fiull support of the army. “We will fight to the last minute, until the last bullet,” he said.

He also claimed, “There is a plot against Libya,” blamed “an Islamic group with a military agenda” for the bloodshed in Benghazi — despite there being no evidence of Islamist involvement in a movement spearheaded by young people, trade unions and lawyers — and said Libya “would see ‘rivers of blood,’ an exodus of foreign oil companies and occupation by ‘imperialists’ if the violence continued.”

At the time of writing, al-Jazeera was reporting that “At least 61 people were killed in clashes in Tripoli,” but that “The protests appeared to be gathering momentum, with demonstrators saying they had taken control of several key towns in the country,” including Benghazi. Ahmad Jibreel, a Libyan diplomat, who confirmed rumors that the justice minister Mustafa Mohamed Abud Al-Jeleil had resigned because he “sided with the protesters,” also told al-Jazeera that “key cities near Libya’s border with Egypt were now in the hands of protesters, which he said would enable foreign media to now enter the country.”

Summing up the spirit of resistance, he said:

Gaddafi’s guards started shooting people in the second day and they shot two people only. We had on that day in Al Bayda city only 300 protesters. When they killed two people, we had more than 5,000 at their funeral, and when they killed 15 people the next day, we had more than 50,000 the following day. This means that the more Gaddafi kills people, the more people go into the streets.

Echoing this spirit, I have just received a message from an exiled Libyan friend, who told me:

Finally and maybe we will be free at last! I am having sleepless nights filled with euphoria about what’s happening in Libya. I am so sick of being in exile and not being able to contribute to my country’s development. Am sick of being ashamed of it and what Gaddafi made of it.

As the situation continues to develop, those words mean much more to me than the platitudes of government representatives in the US and the UK, who have done so little to oppose Gaddafi’s rule, and so much to enrich themselves, and who, in addition, have almost excelled in cynicism when it comes to Libya’s role in the “War on Terror.” As my friend also told me:

All I can say is that we are all so excited about the prospects of change and the ability to have some say in how to manage our wealth of natural resources. The West robbed us of this right earlier, then we allowed our own dreadful leaders do the same and worse.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook and Twitter). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in July 2010, details about the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, on tour in the UK throughout 2011, and available on DVD here), my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

On two points, however, the government failed to banish the authoritarian demons of the Labour years: control orders and the deportation of foreign terror suspects on the basis of “diplomatic assurances.”

Control orders, introduced as emergency legislation in March 2005, after the House of Lords ruled that the government’s previous manner of dealing with foreign terror suspects in the wake of the 9/11 attacks — imprisoning them without charge or trial — was unlawful, were designed, as the government’s review states, to prevent individuals under suspicion “from engaging in terrorism-related activity by placing a range of restrictions on their activities, including curfews, restrictions on access to associates and communications and, in some cases, relocation.” Since their introduction, they have been applied to 48 men in total, although currently they apply to just eight men — all British nationals, rather than the foreign nationals for whom the system was designed.

A rather less bland description of the circumstances in which those held on control orders are obiged to live can be found in an article I wrote in November:

Typically, they involve forced relocation within the UK (often to almost uninhabitable flats in areas where racism is prevalent), punitive curfews, the vetting of all visitors, a ban on the use of computers and mobile phones, tagging, the obligation to check in regularly (at all times of the day and night) with the security firms monitoring the tags, and random raids by Home Office personnel. For those with families, their wives and children suffer; those who live alone are often horrendously isolated.

After extensive negotiations, involving serious conflict within the coalition government between Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, who pledged to abolish control orders, and Prime Minister David Cameron and Theresa May, who had both been given alarmist briefings by the security services, the government reached a compromise, which is an improvement in some ways, but a thorough disappointment in others.

As explained in the government’s review:

The review has concluded that the current control order regime can and should be repealed … There will be an end to the use of forced relocation and lengthy curfews that prevent individuals leading a normal daily life. Under control orders the Government could implement any measure deemed necessary provided it was not struck down by a court. Under this regime, the Government will specify in greater detail the measures that will and will not be available.

Stressing that prosecution — rather then mere containment — is an objective of the new measures, known officially as “terrorism prevention and investigation measures” (TPIMs), the review states that they “will be time limited to two years maximum to emphasise that they are a short term expedient not a long term solution. They may be reimposed after two years only where there is new material to demonstrate that the person concerned poses a continued threat. While that person might reach the end of the two year period with prosecution not having been possible, successful prosecution will always be the objective.”

The government also states that the new measures “will allow greater freedom of communication and association than the control order regime, placing only limited restrictions on communications, including use of the internet, and on the freedom to associate,” that those subject to the conditions “will be free to work and study unless this could facilitate or increase the risk of involvement in terrorism- related activity,” that they will “allow only tightly defined exclusion from particular places and the prevention of travel overseas,” and that they will “allow for an overnight residence requirement with some additional flexibilities e.g. in relation to overnight stays outside the residence, [which] would be verified by an electronic tag.”

Worryingly, however, the new laws — to be introduced in December — will be permanent, meaning that Parliament will no longer be required to renew them annually, as happened with control orders. They also allow the government to place “limited restrictions in certain defined circumstances on financial transactions overseas,” enable the government to “require an individual to report regularly to the police,” and, if the conditions are breached, “without reasonable excuse,” will constitute a criminal offence carrying a maximum penalty of five years’ imprisonment.

The government also proposes that “there may be exceptional circumstances where it could be necessary for the Government to seek Parliamentary approval for additional restrictive measures. In the event of a very serious terrorist risk that cannot be managed by any other means more stringent measures may be required. Such measures would include curfews and further restrictions on communications, association and movement. They would only be allowed if the Secretary of State is satisfied on the balance of probabilities (a higher threshold than reasonable belief) that the person is or has been involved in terrorism-related activity.”

Why the new system still relies on the use of secret evidence, fundamentally undermining notions of open justice

While it is clearly possible, by reading between the lines, to conclude that, although the TPIMs are an improvement, they still allow the authorities considerable leeway to indulge in the kind of persecution that has wrecked the mental health of numerous control order detainees (and their families), the main problem is that the revised system still shies away from prosecution, only mentioning it as an objective, and, moreoever, continues to rely on untested secret evidence to justify its assertions that the individuals who are to be subjected to TPIMs are a threat.

The review tries to tiptoe around this problem, claiming that the measures may, for example, apply to people plotting terrorist activity whose plot has been disrupted, but against whom insufficient evidence exists to support a prosecution, but what this actually means is that there is no evidence. It is also disappointing that those who “argued in the consultation process of this review that the use of communications intercept material as evidence in court would remove the need for control orders by making prosecution easier” were brushed aside. On this point, the review states, “The evidence presented to the review does not support this position,” despite the hard work of groups such as JUSTICE (see the PDF here) to establish that the opposite is true.

As a result, the use of secret evidence remains at the heart of the new measures, as it did with control orders, and still includes the special advocates who represent detainees in closed court sessions, but then, like some Kafkaesque nightmare, are prohibited from discussing anything that took place in those sessions with the individuals they are supposed to represent.

On this point, the review indicates, lamely, that “Some enhancements will be made to the operation of the special advocate regime pending fuller consideration in the forthcoming Green Paper on the use of sensitive material in judicial proceedings,” but what this means in reality is that the new system is really nothing more than a refurbished version of the existing regime.

In March 2009, at a meeting on secret evidence in the House of Commons, Dinah Rose QC, who has experience of the Special Immigration Appeals Commission, where secret evidence is heard, in three different roles — as instructed by the Home Office, as a representative of some of the detainees held on the basis of secret evidence, and as a special advocate — explained how the use of secret evidence thoroughly undermines any notion that the system is fair and just.

It is “hard to explain just how shocking an experience SIAC is for an advocate used to the basic norms of our legal system,” she said. “It is the first principle of natural justice that a person has a right to know the case against them, so that they can respond to it. We take this principle for granted, from our earliest childhood.” Noting that “this principle simply does not apply in SIAC,” she also explained that, as a result:

[A]lthough SIAC looks and sounds like a court, and the judges and barristers behave with the courtesy and formalities that are used in court, it is in reality nothing of the kind. Often it feels to me like an elaborate charade, in which we are all playing the roles of barrister, solicitor, appellant and judge, but where the basic substance of a court hearing — the testing of evidence to establish where truth lies — is entirely missing.

How the review abandons foreign terror suspects facing deportation, and also held on the basis of secret evidence

In addition, the continued relaince on secret evidence not only impacts on those who will be held under TPIMs, but also on other individuals — almost entirely ignored by the mainstream media — who are imprisoned or held on deportation bail (a system very similar to control orders) pending deportation.

For these men, also held on the basis of secret evidence, the counter-terrorism review was concerned solely with the government’s plans to deport them to regimes where they face the risk of torture or other ill-treatment, and did not touch upon the secret evidence used to assess them as a threat, or the circumstances in which they are held, while the government attempts to deport them.

The planned deportation of these men is a long-winded process that has, to date, involved rulings in the government’s favour, against the Jordanian-born preacher Abu Qatada and two Algerians identfied as Detainee U and Detainee BB in February 2009, and, more generally, against eight men (seven Algerians, including U and BB, and another Jordanian, Hussein al-Samamara) last July. These cases (and others — there are 14 in total) are on appeal in the European Court of Human Rights, which is expected to make a ruling in the case of Abu Qatada, U and BB sometime this year, but in the meantime the men are either imprisoned (as is the case with Abu Qatada and U) or held on deportation bail, a form of house arrest that is effectively interchangeable with the conditions under which conrol order detainees are held.

For the men held on deportation bail, the effects of house arrest are as severe as they are for control order detainees, as can be readily appreciated in this interview with Hussein al-Samamara (and this BBC broadcast), and in this article written recently by Mustapha Taleb (Detainee Y), an Algerian who was tried and cleared in connection with the so-called Ricin Plot, but was then subjected to a control order, and who endures a life of desperate and unacceptable solitude.

However, as noted above, instead of addressing the conditions in which these men are held, and the secret evidence used to justify holding them, the review was concerned solely with the conditions of their enforced repatriation. Instead of questioning the basis of their detention, Lord Macdonald stated instead, “I have no doubt that it is entirely appropriate for the Government to seek lawfully to deport those overseas citizens whose presence in the UK is credibly considered to represent a threat to our national security.”

In addition, he embraced the government’s decision to enter into “arrangements with certain foreign States, with a view to obtaining reliable guarantees relating to the treatment of returned persons.” dismissing concerns expressed by lawyers and human rights groups that these “diplomatic assurances” — with Algeria, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya and Ethiopia — are worthless, and are an unacceptable way for the government to  disregard its obligations under Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which states that “No one shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” and Article 3.1 of the UN Convention Against Torture, which stipulates that “No State Party shall expel, return (‘refouler’) or extradite a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.”

Moreover, Lord Macdonald proceeded to recommend that expanding the programme of “diplomatic assurances” was appropriate. Responding to complaints that the programme “gives succour to regimes that torture or, worse, that it actively encourages the practice of abuse and mistreatment,” he stated, “My conclusion on the evidence is that the opposite is more likely to be true. It seems to me that the very process of engaging with other countries on the issue of the appropriate treatment of prisoners, and obtaining guarantees in that regard, is likely to have a positive effect upon the regimes in question,” and added, “The evidence turned up by the Review is strongly supportive of the government’s programme of safe returns, which should be continued and, wherever possible, extended.”

In conclusion, then, although the government has tinkered with control orders, it has failed to accept that there are only two acceptable options for dealing with terrror suspects (prosecution or surveillance), has failed to accept that the UK should join the rest of the world in using itercept evidence in court, has failed to accept that the use of secret evidence (and the special advocate system) is fundamentally unfair, and has also failed to address the fundamental problems faced by foreign terror suspects — their bail conditions, the use of secret evidence, and the feeble “diplomatic assurances” designed to paper over the problems with repatriating them, rather than putting them on trial in the UK.

For Muslim men suspected of “terrorism-related activity,” justice is still elusive.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook and Twitter). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in July 2010, details about the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here), my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

As published exclusively on Cageprisoners.

For other articles dealing with Belmarsh, control orders, deportation bail, deportations and extraditions, see Abu Qatada: Law Lords and Government Endorse Torture (February 2009), Ex-Guantánamo prisoner refused entry into UK, held in deportation centre (February 2009), Home Secretary ignores Court decision, kidnaps bailed men and imprisons them in Belmarsh (February 2009), Britain’s insane secret terror evidence (March 2009), Torture taints all our lives (published in the Guardian’s Comment is free), Britain’s Guantánamo: Calling For An End To Secret Evidence, Five Stories From Britain’s Guantánamo: (1) Detainee Y, Five Stories From Britain’s Guantánamo: (2) Detainee BB, Five Stories From Britain’s Guantánamo: (3) Detainee U, Five Stories From Britain’s Guantánamo: (4) Hussain Al-Samamara, Five Stories From Britain’s Guantánamo: (5) Detainee Z, Britain’s Guantánamo: Fact or Fiction? (all April 2009), Taking liberties with our justice system and Death in Libya, betrayal in the West (both for the Guardian), Law Lords Condemn UK’s Use of Secret Evidence And Control Orders (June 2009), Miliband Shows Leadership, Reveals Nothing About Torture To Parliamentary Committee (June 2009), Britain’s Torture Troubles: What Tony Blair Knew (June 2009), Seven years of madness: the harrowing tale of Mahmoud Abu Rideh and Britain’s anti-terror laws, Would you be able to cope?: Letters by the children of control order detainee Mahmoud Abu Rideh, Control order detainee Mahmoud Abu Rideh to be allowed to leave the UK (all June 2009), Testing control orders and Dismantle the secret state (for the Guardian), UK government issues travel document to control order detainee Mahmoud Abu Rideh after horrific suicide attempt (July 2009), Secret evidence in the case of the North West 10 “terror suspects” (August 2009), Letting go of control orders (for the Guardian, September 2009), Another Blow To Britain’s Crumbling Control Order Regime (September 2009), UK Judge Approves Use of Secret Evidence in Guantánamo Case (November 2009), Calling Time On The Use Of Secret Evidence In The UK (December 2009), Compensation for control orders is a distraction (for the Guardian, January 2010), Control Orders Take Another Blow: Libyan Cartoonist Freed (Detainee DD) (January 2010), Control Orders: Solicitors’ Evidence before the Joint Committee on Human Rights, February 3, 2010 and Control Orders: Special Advocates’ Evidence before the Joint Committee on Human Rights, February 3, 2010 (both February 2010), Will Parliament Rid Us of the Cruel and Unjust Control Order Regime? (February 2010), Don’t renew control orders, CAMPACC, JUSTICE and the Joint Committee on Human Rights tell MPs (February 2010), Fahad Hashmi and Terrorist Hysteria in US Courts (April 2010), 98 MPs Who Supported Human Rights While Countering Terrorism (May 2010), UK Terror Ruling Provides Urgent Test for New Government (May 2010), An uncivilized society (in the Guardian), New letter to MPs asking them to oppose the use of secret evidence in UK courts, and to support the return from Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer (May 2010), Torture Complicity Under the Spotlight in Europe (Part One): The UK (July 2010), Fighting Ghosts: An Interview with Husein Al-Samamara (July 2010), Ruling sends message on control orders (for the Guardian, July 2010), UK Judges Endorse Double Standards on Terror Deportations (August 2010), In Memoriam: Faraj Hassan Alsaadi (1980-2010) (August 2010), An interview with Faraj Hassan Alsaadi (from 2007) (August 2010), UK Government Faces Major Rebellion on Control Orders (November 2010), Gareth Peirce Discusses Her New Book, “Dispatches from the Dark Side: On Torture and the Death of Justice” (November 2010), Are Control Orders About To Be Scrapped? (November 2010), Lord Carlile, Discredited Advocate of Control Orders, Presents Flawed Alternative (December 2010), The Ricin Plot, and Why the Government’s Terrorism Review Ignores the Dangers of Secret Evidence (January 2011).

As I explain in a separate article to be published soon, although the review has led to a decison to rebrand control orders — a form of house arrest, introduced in 2005 and used to hold men without charge or trial on the basis of secret evidence — allowing the men in question (currently, eight British nationals) slightly more freedom than previously, the rebranding fails to discuss the fundamental problem with holding men on the basis of secret evidence, and also fails to address what will happen to foreign terror suspects, imprisoned or held on deportation bail in circumstances similar to the control orders, who are also held without charge or trial on the basis of secret evidence.

Tonight’s Amnesty event, “Ricin! the inside story of the plot that never was,” follows the recent publication of a book of the same name, written by Lawrence Archer (the foreman of the jury in the ricin trial of 2004) and journalist Fiona Bawdon, exposing how the trial, which lasted seven months, and led to the acquital of four of the five defendants, revealed that there was no plot, and also, crucially, revealed in detail the dangerous incompetence of the security services and the manipulation of a false “terror plot” for political aims.

Where this ties in with the counter-terrorism review is a bleak tale that deserves to be disseminated as widely as possible. As Amnesty’s introduction to the event states, “Weeks later the freed men were threatened with deportation to Algeria, despite the jury’s not guilty verdicts. To date only one man has been granted the right to remain in the UK. Two of the men were re-arrested in 2005 and held under control order conditions, accused of being threats to national security, largely based on rehashed evidence from the ricin trial. With juries in terrorism cases constantly under threat by successive governments, this trial is a compelling example of the continuing need for a jury.”

One of those men — Mustapha Taleb (also known as Detainee Y) — is still held pending deportation, on the basis of secret evidence, despite having already been acquited by a jury, and he recently wrote poignantly about the painful isolation he endures as a detainee on deportation bail, living alone and subjected to curfews and restrictions that, in his case, and those of others held on deportation bail, were not addressed by the counter-terrorism review, which focused only on the alleged — and bitterly disputed — safety of “diplomatic assurances” intended to guarantee the men’s humane treatment on their return to their home countries.

Speaking tonight are Michael Mansfield QC, who successfully represented Mouloud Sihali in the ricin trial, Jon Snow of Channel 4 News, Julian Hayes, a solicitor who represented Sidali Feddag in the ricin trial, Lawrence Archer, and Diane Abbott MP, who, in 2009, publicly challenged the use of secret evidence, hosting a parliamentary meeting and raising an Early Day Motion in the Commons. The event will be chaired by journalist Peter Oborne.

Below, I’m cross-posting an article written by Lawrence Archer when his book was published last autumn, which provides the necessary context for concluding that, despite the government’s tinkering with control orders, its adherence to the need for secret evidence and its marginalization of those facing deportation on the basis of secret evidence demonstrate that it remains wedded to a system that is fundamentally unacceptable in a country that prides itself on open justice, and that, as is revealed in the case of Mustapha Taleb, has led to some deeply questionable conclusions.

Ricin! The plot that never was
By Lawrence Archer, Ceasefire, October 2010

I knew what the buff envelope was as soon as I spotted it on the doormat; another jury summons. My heart sank. I’d served on a jury in an assault case only two years previously and it had been a brutal experience. The CCTV evidence of a young man being struck on the back of the head with an axe still stayed with me. But this new summons was to the Old Bailey: now that could be interesting. As it turned out, it was life changing.

I was to become the jury foreman in the first terrorism trial in Britain since 9/11. The case became known as the Ricin Trial, since the prosecution alleged that a group of Algerian men were conspiring to manufacture explosives and toxins, including the deadly poison ricin, for terrorist purposes.

The case came to court in September 2004. Five men stood in the dock, while a further four were scheduled to be tried in a follow-on trial, the Court Service considering, probably correctly, that prosecuting nine defendants at once would have both crammed the courtroom and confused any jury. The defendants were a disparate bunch, mostly associated with each other through the Finsbury Park mosque.

Although it has since become inextricably linked with terrorism by the presence of the notorious preacher Abu Hamza, the mosque had previously served a different and rather more peaceful purpose, providing a focal point for the large Algerian community who lived in the neighbourhood. Men would meet, socialise, eat, swap information on jobs and lodgings and even sleep at the mosque, although the latter was an informal arrangement and frowned upon by the mosque trustees.

The five Algerian defendants, Kamel Bourgass, Mouloud Sihali, David Khalef, Mustapha Taleb and Sidali Feddag, were all charged on two counts: Conspiracy to murder and “Conspiracy to cause a public nuisance”, a 19th century piece of legislation that had been resurrected by the CPS for the trial.

Information had come into the British authorities in early January 2003 that a group of Algerian terrorists was going to strike the UK imminently. The news understandably caused huge consternation at Scotland Yard and within a matter of days Anti-Terror Branch officers carried out a raid on a property in Wood Green, North London. The shabby one-bed flat, provided for the 17 year old Sidali Feddag whilst his asylum claim was being processed, was searched thoroughly for poisons and explosives.

Feddag had met Kamel Bourgass at the Finsbury Park mosque some months earlier and had offered him accommodation in the flat when he realised Bourgass was homeless. However, Feddag had asked Bourgass to leave a matter of weeks before the raid when his brother needed somewhere to stay. Bourgass had duly obliged, but crucially left many of his possessions behind. Among these were some suspicious items: rubber gloves, thermometers, bottles of chemicals, a small quantity of castor oil seeds (the principle ingredient for making ricin), a large sum of cash and, most damning of all, a hand-written set of recipes for manufacturing a variety of toxins and explosives, contained in a locked sports bag. The recipes were later identified as being written by Bourgass and his fingerprints covered the other suspicious finds.

Scientists from the government research laboratories at Porton Down carried out generic testing for the presence of proteins on some of the items found at the scene. One item, a mortar and pestle, showed a very weak positive reaction to this on-site testing, but later, highly specific tests for ricin, carried out at the laboratory, proved the initial analysis to be misleading. According to the chief scientist, in his evidence to the Old Bailey, he had declared the tests negative. As far as he was concerned, there was no ricin at Wood Green.

A series of arrests followed, although the main suspect, Kamel Bourgass, was missing. Mustapha Taleb was picked up almost immediately, after his fingerprint was discovered on a photocopy of the poison recipes. David Khalef had been arrested some months earlier in Norfolk, found in possession of a copy of the recipes. Mouloud Sihali had been picked up at the same time as Khalef. He had connections with one of the chief suspects in the alleged conspiracy, having let him stay in his flat for a number of weeks.

Despite Porton Down knowing within 48 hours of the raid that there were no toxins found at the scene, the police had somehow been notified of the exact opposite. The ensuing media reports were unequivocal; there was a “factory of death” in Wood Green and a quantity of ricin had been discovered. Government spokesmen confirmed the find, announcing in a public statement that “a small amount of the material recovered from the Wood Green premises has tested positive for the presence of ricin … The Department (of Health) is now alerting the health service, including primary care, about these developments.” Prime Minister Tony Blair weighed in later the same day, announcing to a meeting of British ambassadors in London, “The arrests which were made show this danger is present and real and with us now. Its potential is huge. ”

The startling headlines almost certainly scared Kamel Bourgass into fleeing London. Within a few days he was holed up in a Manchester flat belonging to a distant acquaintance. When police arrived at the flat several days later, entirely coincidentally and in order to detain another man unconnected with the ricin plot, Bourgass was recognised and promptly arrested.

What happened next was withheld from the ricin trial jury, to avoid prejudicing the evidence. Bourgass broke free from the officers guarding him, snatched a knife from the kitchen and attempted to escape.

In the ensuing chaos he violently stabbed police officer Stephen Oake to death and badly wounded several others before he was finally restrained.

Shockingly, the myth of the ricin find was soon to have an even greater effect. Despite the fact that Porton Down knew there was no ricin at Wood Green in early January 2003, Colin Powell, then US Secretary of State, mentioned its definite discovery several weeks later on February 5th, as part of his presentation to the United Nations Security Council. Arguing the case for the invasion of Iraq, Powell cited the Wood Green “find” as a cause for grave concern and linked it to an “Iraq-linked terrorist network”. British and American forces invaded the country within a matter of weeks.

At the end of the ricin trial, which had lasted seven months, cost an estimated £20 million and caused the jury to deliberate for 17 days, Bourgass was convicted on the lesser, although still serious, charge of Conspiracy to cause a public nuisance. The jury were unable to reach a decision on the Conspiracy to murder charge and were eventually discharged. Bourgass had in fact already been convicted of murder and malicious wounding in a previous Old Bailey trial, kept deliberately secret to avoid any press revelations, and was serving a lengthy jail sentence. The other four defendants, Sihali, Taleb, Khalef and Feddag were found not guilty on all charges.

The second, follow on trial collapsed, as the CPS decided there was little realistic hope of any convictions, as much of the evidence alleged against them was linked to the original defendants. While several of the defendants had entered the UK illegally, they had all served enough time in custody to be released after a few days and were let out on normal immigration bail conditions.

A reporting embargo in place since early 2003 had meant that the press had been unable to publicise the case until the verdicts came in. Now, after the jury had announced its decisions, the media had a field day, declaring Bourgass to be “The Toxic Terrorist” and claiming that he had Al-Qaeda connections. The original intelligence given to the British authorities was revealed to have come from another Algerian man, Mohammed Meguerba, who had been interrogated by the DRS, Algeria’s notoriously brutal secret police, who had a fearsome reputation for using torture during their questioning.

While Bourgass was making all the headlines, the other defendants received scant media coverage. The general opinion seemed to be that they had “got away with it”, despite the jury’s lengthy deliberations and Not Guilty verdicts. Politicians and the police were equally disappointed in the jury decisions: there were even mutterings in some quarters that the jury had “gone rogue”. Home Secretary Charles Clarke announced that he would be keeping “a close eye” on the cleared men, while Met Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair told David Frost on his TV show that the law might have to be amended following the verdicts. “I think we’ll just have to look again, to see if there’s some other legislation around ‘acts preparatory to terrorism’ or something of that nature, that’s what we’ll have to do.”

The jury went back to their day jobs, but the story wasn’t over for the cleared defendants. Within weeks, the government announced its intention to deport them to their native country, despite the fact that Algeria had an appalling record on human rights and the defendants had been tarred with the brush of “terrorist”. When it seemed that there might be legal difficulties with the deportation process, the British government attempted to negotiate Memoranda of Understanding with the more contentious countries, including Libya and Algeria. (Libya signed up. Algeria refused, on the grounds that it didn’t go in for mistreatment of detainees, so there really was no need). A lengthy legal battle ensued to derail the deportations, but far worse was to come for two of the men.

Following the 7th July and failed 21st July 2005 bombings on London Transport targets, and the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, the British public were understandably jittery, and fear of terrorism was running at fever pitch. New anti-terror legislation was hurriedly put together.

In the early morning of 15th September 2005, coincidentally the same day as Home Secretary Charles Clarke announced plans for 90-day detention of terror suspects, police stormed the properties of Mustapha Taleb and Mouloud Sihali.

Both were detained as “threats to national security”, although neither has ever been charged with any offence or even interviewed by the police. After several months in jail they were both released, subject to strict immigration bail conditions (Control Orders in all but name). Terms of their release included wearing an electronic tag, being curfewed for up to 22 hours a day, limiting their movements to a small geographical area and having their premises searched regularly. Potential visitors had to be vetted and approved by the Home Office.

Sihali eventually had his case heard by the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC) which rules on foreign deportation matters. In May 2007, SIAC decided that Sihali posed no danger to the British public and lifted his bail conditions, although he remains threatened with deportation to this day and is fighting it through the appeal courts. Mustapha Taleb has not been that fortunate. He was put back in jail for two years, where he was adjudged to be a severe suicide risk by the prison psychiatrist. He currently lives in a provincial town, subjected once again to strict bail conditions and cooped up in a tiny house for 20 hours a day, kept sane by anti-depressant drugs. The British government would like to deport him too, despite the fact that he was granted asylum here in 2000, based on evidence that he had been tortured in Algeria.

David Khalef has been granted leave to remain in the UK and now lives quietly in London. Sidali Feddag is the only one of the cleared defendants with any real sense of achievement after the ricin trial. Impressed by the British jury system, he has gone on to study for a degree in law.

As for me, I was non-political before the case. The ricin trial has changed all that.

Lawrence Archer is a writer and engineer. This is his first book. Fiona Bawdon, who co-wrote the book, is a respected freelance journalist who writes on legal matters.

Ricin! The Inside Story of the Terror Plot that Never Was was released by Pluto Press on 11th October 2010.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook and Twitter). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in July 2010, details about the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here), my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

For other articles dealing with Belmarsh, control orders, deportation bail, deportations and extraditions, see Abu Qatada: Law Lords and Government Endorse Torture (February 2009), Ex-Guantánamo prisoner refused entry into UK, held in deportation centre (February 2009), Home Secretary ignores Court decision, kidnaps bailed men and imprisons them in Belmarsh (February 2009), Britain’s insane secret terror evidence (March 2009), Torture taints all our lives (published in the Guardian’s Comment is free), Britain’s Guantánamo: Calling For An End To Secret Evidence, Five Stories From Britain’s Guantánamo: (1) Detainee Y, Five Stories From Britain’s Guantánamo: (2) Detainee BB, Five Stories From Britain’s Guantánamo: (3) Detainee U, Five Stories From Britain’s Guantánamo: (4) Hussain Al-Samamara, Five Stories From Britain’s Guantánamo: (5) Detainee Z, Britain’s Guantánamo: Fact or Fiction? (all April 2009), Taking liberties with our justice system and Death in Libya, betrayal in the West (both for the Guardian), Law Lords Condemn UK’s Use of Secret Evidence And Control Orders (June 2009), Miliband Shows Leadership, Reveals Nothing About Torture To Parliamentary Committee (June 2009), Britain’s Torture Troubles: What Tony Blair Knew (June 2009), Seven years of madness: the harrowing tale of Mahmoud Abu Rideh and Britain’s anti-terror laws, Would you be able to cope?: Letters by the children of control order detainee Mahmoud Abu Rideh, Control order detainee Mahmoud Abu Rideh to be allowed to leave the UK (all June 2009), Testing control orders and Dismantle the secret state (for the Guardian), UK government issues travel document to control order detainee Mahmoud Abu Rideh after horrific suicide attempt (July 2009), Secret evidence in the case of the North West 10 “terror suspects” (August 2009), Letting go of control orders (for the Guardian, September 2009), Another Blow To Britain’s Crumbling Control Order Regime (September 2009), UK Judge Approves Use of Secret Evidence in Guantánamo Case (November 2009), Calling Time On The Use Of Secret Evidence In The UK (December 2009), Compensation for control orders is a distraction (for the Guardian, January 2010), Control Orders Take Another Blow: Libyan Cartoonist Freed (Detainee DD) (January 2010), Control Orders: Solicitors’ Evidence before the Joint Committee on Human Rights, February 3, 2010 and Control Orders: Special Advocates’ Evidence before the Joint Committee on Human Rights, February 3, 2010 (both February 2010), Will Parliament Rid Us of the Cruel and Unjust Control Order Regime? (February 2010), Don’t renew control orders, CAMPACC, JUSTICE and the Joint Committee on Human Rights tell MPs (February 2010), Fahad Hashmi and Terrorist Hysteria in US Courts (April 2010), 98 MPs Who Supported Human Rights While Countering Terrorism (May 2010), UK Terror Ruling Provides Urgent Test for New Government (May 2010), An uncivilized society (in the Guardian), New letter to MPs asking them to oppose the use of secret evidence in UK courts, and to support the return from Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer (May 2010), Torture Complicity Under the Spotlight in Europe (Part One): The UK (July 2010), Fighting Ghosts: An Interview with Husein Al-Samamara (July 2010), Ruling sends message on control orders (for the Guardian, July 2010), UK Judges Endorse Double Standards on Terror Deportations (August 2010), In Memoriam: Faraj Hassan Alsaadi (1980-2010) (August 2010), An interview with Faraj Hassan Alsaadi (from 2007) (August 2010), UK Government Faces Major Rebellion on Control Orders (November 2010), Gareth Peirce Discusses Her New Book, “Dispatches from the Dark Side: On Torture and the Death of Justice” (November 2010), Are Control Orders About To Be Scrapped? (November 2010), Lord Carlile, Discredited Advocate of Control Orders, Presents Flawed Alternative (December 2010).

Around 50 men have been subjected to control orders over the last six years, but now — in a clear sign of how a regime designed for foreign “terror suspects” has drifted dangerously into new territory — they apply only to British citizens, nine at present, who are mostly subjected to “internal exile,” required to relocate to other parts of the country, as though this was a perfectly acceptable way for citizens to be treated.

As I explained in my previous article, the LibDems are not the only politicians opposed to the retention of control orders. Tory opponents include the attorney general Dominic Grieve, who has described control orders as “a departure from our established principles [which] threaten our liberties greatly,” security minister Pauline Neville-Jones, a former chairwoman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, who told the Lords that the Tories would take office “with the aim, if we possibly can, of eliminating the control order regime,” the justice secretary Kenneth Clarke, and the maverick and outspoken MP David Davis, who threatened a Commons revolt if control orders are not dropped.

Another prominent opponent is the Liberal peer Lord Macdonald QC, appointed by the coalition government to head the counter-terrorism review which has been looking at the future of control orders, and whose conclusions are due to be published imminently. Lord Macdonald is implacably opposed to control orders, but is up against home secretary Theresa May and the Prime Minister, David Cameron, both of whom have been spooked by the security services, who have issued dark warnings about the importance of retaining the control order regime. Lord Macdonald was so incensed by the home secretary’s stance that he apparently wrote to her “warning that he would publicly denounce any decision to retain control orders” when the review is finally published, and when David Cameron was told about the fierce emotions engendered by control orders, he reportedly stated, “We are heading for a fucking car crash.”

On Monday, another supporter of control orders waded into the debate. Lord Carlile of Berriew QC was appointed by the Labour government as its independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, and, every year, issued a report concluding that control orders were still required. His “independence” has been called into question by numerous critics, of which one example, from a hearing of the Joint Committee on Human Rights in February this year, should suffice to demonstrate how, with even the best will, those too close to the machinery of secrecy may end up being infected by something less than objectivity. This is an exchange between the Chair, the Tory MP Andrew Dismore, and the human rights lawyer Gareth Peirce, who represents some of the men held on control orders, and others whom the government wishes to deport, who are imprisoned without charge or trial or held on deportation bail, in circumstances similar to those held on control orders:

Chairman: [O]ne of the concerns I have is that if somebody does such a very important and sensitive job for so long, inevitably they can lose some of their objectivity, because they are dealing with those same issues and the same people in the security services all the time, and I just wondered if such objectivity after such a long period of time may have worn a little thin.

Ms Peirce: I think there is a history of perhaps frank but unfortunate assessments, beginning with those who were interned [from December 2001 until the Law Lords ruled in December 2004 that this was in contravention of the Human Rights Act], in which Lord Carlile had stated: “I have seen everything that is in the secret evidence, I am completely satisfied the Home Secretary appropriately certificated the individual”, even in cases where SIAC [the Special Immigration Appeals Commission, the "secret court" that deals with these cases] itself came to an opposite view, in cases where ultimately the House of Lords condemned the process twice, where the European Court said, “This was utterly inadequate information”. And now we are into a different regime of control orders and Lord Carlile is again making assessments of the evidence and giving a view as to whether they are justified, and those who are on the receiving end of that simply see that as an extension of an unfairness when they do not know the position.

In the Daily Telegraph on Monday, in an article entitled, “A new type of control order is essential,” with the sub-heading, “Nick Clegg needs to consider the safety of 60 million people in his security review,” Lord Carlile took aim at the Deputy Prime Minister, setting the tone by stating, incorrectly, “We know that there may be up to 2,000 terrorists living in the United Kingdom,” when what this actually means is that the security services suspect that up to 2,000 people in the UK may have some sort of interest in or involvement in planning or discussing terrorist activities.

Moving on to the men held on control orders, a “cohort of individuals, currently less than a dozen, who cannot be prosecuted” for reasons that “include the protection of home and foreign intelligence sources, and the secrecy of technical surveillance methods,” Lord Carlile confidently stated, “Each of those dangerous individuals has been found by a senior judge, after exhaustive examination, to be rightly suspected of being a terrorist,” and then proceeded with some serious scaremongering, stating, “Within a few weeks from today they could be walking the streets unrestrained. Efforts would be made to watch them — but given that resources are not unlimited — this will have to be at the expense of vigilance against other potential terrorists, some equally dangerous, and who might be capable of prosecution.”

Turning his attention to Nick Clegg, he wrote, with apparent mind-reading skills, that Mr. Clegg “knows that those who have up-to-date knowledge of the intelligence and other evidence are right in their assessment of the threat,” because he “has been privy to the making of control orders since the general election.” He added, patronizingly, “Unfortunately, the writers of the Liberal Democrat manifesto had seen none of the intelligence before they declared that control orders would be abolished on the grounds that they are, as … Lord Macdonald QC opined in September 2009, a ”hopeless device.’”

Returning again to his mind-reading skills, he stated, “Mr. Clegg knows that he cannot reject out of hand the expert opinions of those who know the evidence and intelligence … Mr. Clegg knows that in political terms his position and credibility are threatened by the issue. He knows too that it would be unforgivable to play politics with public safety.”

Lord Carlile then proposed a three-tier system — “control order lite,” if you like — to replace the current regime:

First, for those who simply want to travel abroad to train as terrorists, we could have foreign travel restriction orders founded on a raised standard of proof of ‘”reasonable belief’” that the individual wishes to leave the UK for purposes connected with training a terrorist.

Second, we could have general travel restriction orders on reasonable belief that the individual has the more developed intent to participate in terrorist activity.

Third, for the most serious cases we could have activity restriction orders, where a judge was satisfied on the much raised standard of the balance of probabilities that the individual is a terrorist. The system would have an increasing scale of restrictions, including curfews (but not compulsory relocation) for the highest tier.

For Lord Carlile, this new system — of which “Mr Clegg and his advisers are aware” — is a suitable compromise, although he could not resist adding, in a final scaremongering flourish, “Other ideas may prove more acceptable,” so long as they do not “recklessly increase the risk against the greatest threat we face.”

Despite his claim that he has been able to “modify my previously expressed view,” Lord Carlile’s views have actually changed every little, and two fundamental problems remain. The first is that everything he believes to be necessary still hinges on the unacceptable use of secret evidence to deprive people of their liberty without charge or trial, and the second is that he maintains that those held on control orders — or, in future, under his three-tier system, should ministers be paying attention to him — “cannot be prosecuted” for reasons that “include the protection of home and foreign intelligence sources, and the secrecy of technical surveillance methods.”

Fortunately, for those who wish to see habeas corpus restored to the country of its origin, ensuring that no one can be deprived of their liberty without a fair trial, and for those who are proud of the traditions of open justice in this country, the solution to the first problem in Lord Carlile’s approach is to be found in the solution to the second. If Britain would join the rest of the world in accepting the use of intercept evidence, and in finding viable ways to protect sources in court, as explained in detail in this report by JUSTICE, the all-party law reform group (PDF), there would be no need for either control orders or Lord Carlile’s proposed three-tier approach.

In addition, although Lord Carlile bemoaned the cost of surveillance, he neatly skipped over the phenomenal cost of maintaining the control order regime, SIAC, and the rest of the secret evidence apparatus — money which would be better spent on surveillance, rather than clinging deperately to the ruins of a policy which was clearly inspired by the lawlessness of the Bush administration’s “War on Terror,” and which has been no less counter-productive in terms of undermining our fundamental values, and providing legitimate grievances for those tempted to listen to terrorist rhetoric.

In short, it is time to regain the moral high ground, and to regain our self-respect.

Note: For further information, see this page on the website of Liberty, where readers can email their MPs and sign a petition.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook and Twitter). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in July 2010, details about the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, currently on tour in the UK, and available on DVD here), and my definitive Guantánamo habeas list, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

As published exclusively on Cageprisoners.

For other articles dealing with Belmarsh, control orders, deportation bail, deportations and extraditions, see Abu Qatada: Law Lords and Government Endorse Torture (February 2009), Ex-Guantánamo prisoner refused entry into UK, held in deportation centre (February 2009), Home Secretary ignores Court decision, kidnaps bailed men and imprisons them in Belmarsh (February 2009), Britain’s insane secret terror evidence (March 2009), Torture taints all our lives (published in the Guardian’s Comment is free), Britain’s Guantánamo: Calling For An End To Secret Evidence, Five Stories From Britain’s Guantánamo: (1) Detainee Y, Five Stories From Britain’s Guantánamo: (2) Detainee BB, Five Stories From Britain’s Guantánamo: (3) Detainee U, Five Stories From Britain’s Guantánamo: (4) Hussain Al-Samamara, Five Stories From Britain’s Guantánamo: (5) Detainee Z, Britain’s Guantánamo: Fact or Fiction? (all April 2009), Taking liberties with our justice system and Death in Libya, betrayal in the West (both for the Guardian), Law Lords Condemn UK’s Use of Secret Evidence And Control Orders (June 2009), Miliband Shows Leadership, Reveals Nothing About Torture To Parliamentary Committee (June 2009), Britain’s Torture Troubles: What Tony Blair Knew (June 2009), Seven years of madness: the harrowing tale of Mahmoud Abu Rideh and Britain’s anti-terror laws, Would you be able to cope?: Letters by the children of control order detainee Mahmoud Abu Rideh, Control order detainee Mahmoud Abu Rideh to be allowed to leave the UK (all June 2009), Testing control orders and Dismantle the secret state (for the Guardian), UK government issues travel document to control order detainee Mahmoud Abu Rideh after horrific suicide attempt (July 2009), Secret evidence in the case of the North West 10 “terror suspects” (August 2009), Letting go of control orders (for the Guardian, September 2009), Another Blow To Britain’s Crumbling Control Order Regime (September 2009), UK Judge Approves Use of Secret Evidence in Guantánamo Case (November 2009), Calling Time On The Use Of Secret Evidence In The UK (December 2009), Compensation for control orders is a distraction (for the Guardian, January 2010), Control Orders Take Another Blow: Libyan Cartoonist Freed (Detainee DD) (January 2010), Control Orders: Solicitors’ Evidence before the Joint Committee on Human Rights, February 3, 2010 and Control Orders: Special Advocates’ Evidence before the Joint Committee on Human Rights, February 3, 2010 (both February 2010), Will Parliament Rid Us of the Cruel and Unjust Control Order Regime? (February 2010), Don’t renew control orders, CAMPACC, JUSTICE and the Joint Committee on Human Rights tell MPs (February 2010), Fahad Hashmi and Terrorist Hysteria in US Courts (April 2010), 98 MPs Who Supported Human Rights While Countering Terrorism (May 2010), UK Terror Ruling Provides Urgent Test for New Government (May 2010), An uncivilized society (in the Guardian), New letter to MPs asking them to oppose the use of secret evidence in UK courts, and to support the return from Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer (May 2010), Torture Complicity Under the Spotlight in Europe (Part One): The UK (July 2010), Fighting Ghosts: An Interview with Husein Al-Samamara (July 2010), Ruling sends message on control orders (for the Guardian, July 2010), UK Judges Endorse Double Standards on Terror Deportations (August 2010), In Memoriam: Faraj Hassan Alsaadi (1980-2010) (August 2010), An interview with Faraj Hassan Alsaadi (from 2007) (August 2010), UK Government Faces Major Rebellion on Control Orders (November 2010), Gareth Peirce Discusses Her New Book, “Dispatches from the Dark Side: On Torture and the Death of Justice” (November 2010), Are Control Orders About To Be Scrapped? (November 2010).

A form of virtual house arrest, control orders were introduced in 2005 after the government’s immediate post-9/11 response to dealing with foreign “terror suspects” — imprisoning them in Belmarsh without charge or trial, on the basis of secret evidence — was ruled illegal by the Law Lords. In recent years, their use was expanded to include British nationals, as well as foreign nationals, who have often been subjected to a form of extrajudicial “internal exile,” obliged to move hundreds of miles from their homes, as well as being subjected to strict curfews, tagging, a requirement to report to the security services at all times of the day and night, the vetting of all visitors, a ban on the use of computers and mobile phones, and the chance that Home office personnel could raid their homes at any time.

However, the continued existence of control orders has been under threat since June 2009, when the Law Lords ruled that imposing them breaches Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees the right to a fair trial, because a suspect held under a control order is not given “sufficient information about the allegations against him to enable him to give effective instructions to the special advocate assigned to him.”

Although the control order regime requires Parliamentary support to exist, being renewed in the House of Commons on an annual basis, this year the Liberal Democrats were determined to bring it to an end, voting en masse to repeal the legislation, and as a result the abolition of control orders was central to their outspoken position on civil liberties, and was something that they were intent on fulfilling, along with the repeal of the 28-day period of pre-trial detention for suspects held within the normal bounds of the law.

Last week, as I explained in detail in a previous article, a rift within the government opened up when it was revealed that home secretary Theresa May had been spooked by the spooks, and was changing her mind about dropping control orders, and that Jonathan Evans, the new head of MI5, had also had a quiet word with David Cameron about the perceived importance of control orders to the security services.

This prompted Ken Macdonald, the Liberal Democrat peer appointed by Theresa May to oversee the review of Labour’s counter-terrorism legislation, to write to the home secretary, “warning that he would publicly denounce any decision to retain control orders,” leading to a public belittling of Macdonald in return, when May used a BBC appearance to state that, although she “thought it appropriate that someone externally should look at it and say they have looked at the right questions and talked to the right people … ultimately, the decision on what is in place in terms of our counter-terrorism legislation is a decision for government.”

Despite this, other opponents lined up behind Ken Macdonald — including energy secretary Chris Huhne, an outspoken critic as a Liberal Democrat in opposition, justice secretary Ken Clarke and the maverick anti-torture MP David Davies, who told the government that he expected 50 Tory and Lib Dem MPs to vote against the government if a decision was taken to keep control orders.

Given that the Liberal Democrats are increasingly seen — by their own party members, and by the public in general — as the losers in this coalition, I would be surprised if Nick Clegg can afford to let control orders slip, as he did with his flagship promise not to raise university tuition fees. This, of course, was recently shot to pieces with the government’s announcement that universities will be allowed to double or triple their fees, leading Aaron Porter, the president of the National Union of Students, to tell the BBC that the NUS will “chase down” any Liberal Democrats voting for the rise in fees.

In conclusion, then, this Saturday night leak from Whitehall to the Observer may well be significant, although it should be noted, in closing, that it does nothing to address the plight of other “terror suspects,” who are also held without charge or trial on the basis of secret evidence — either on deportation bail, where the constraints on their liberty are remarkably similar to control orders, or in other cases, in prison.

Unlike those on control orders, these men are facing deportation to their home countries — including Algeria and Jordan — on the basis of flimsy “memoranda of understanding” (or, in Algeria’s case, nothing more than a verbal agreement), which are supposed to guarantee that they will be treated humanely, even though these agreements have been widely criticized for being unreliable, and for being nothing more than a cynical attempt by Western countries to undermine their obligations, under the UN Convention Against Torture, not to “expel, return (‘refouler’) or extradite a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.”

For these men, the Law Lords’ intervention regarding the use of secret evidence in control orders has not been extended, and they remain trapped — in their homes or in prison — without charge or trial, and on the basis of secret evidence, with few MPs prepared to follow up on the Early Day Motion submitted by Diane Abbott MP in March 2009, which called for an end to the use of secret evidence in all cases related to allegations of terrorism, and a return to the guiding principle of all countries that like to claim that they are civilized: the right to be charged and tried in an open court.

While we await the findings of the counter-terrorism review headed by Ken Macdonald, let us not forget those for whom justice still seems to be an unattainable dream.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook and Twitter). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in July 2010, details about the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, currently on tour in the UK, and available on DVD here), and my definitive Guantánamo habeas list, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

As published exclusively on Cageprisoners.

For other articles dealing with Belmarsh, control orders, deportation bail, deportations and extraditions, see Abu Qatada: Law Lords and Government Endorse Torture (February 2009), Ex-Guantánamo prisoner refused entry into UK, held in deportation centre (February 2009), Home Secretary ignores Court decision, kidnaps bailed men and imprisons them in Belmarsh (February 2009), Britain’s insane secret terror evidence (March 2009), Torture taints all our lives (published in the Guardian’s Comment is free), Britain’s Guantánamo: Calling For An End To Secret Evidence, Five Stories From Britain’s Guantánamo: (1) Detainee Y, Five Stories From Britain’s Guantánamo: (2) Detainee BB, Five Stories From Britain’s Guantánamo: (3) Detainee U, Five Stories From Britain’s Guantánamo: (4) Hussain Al-Samamara, Five Stories From Britain’s Guantánamo: (5) Detainee Z, Britain’s Guantánamo: Fact or Fiction? (all April 2009), Taking liberties with our justice system and Death in Libya, betrayal in the West (both for the Guardian), Law Lords Condemn UK’s Use of Secret Evidence And Control Orders (June 2009), Miliband Shows Leadership, Reveals Nothing About Torture To Parliamentary Committee (June 2009), Britain’s Torture Troubles: What Tony Blair Knew (June 2009), Seven years of madness: the harrowing tale of Mahmoud Abu Rideh and Britain’s anti-terror laws, Would you be able to cope?: Letters by the children of control order detainee Mahmoud Abu Rideh, Control order detainee Mahmoud Abu Rideh to be allowed to leave the UK (all June 2009), Testing control orders and Dismantle the secret state (for the Guardian), UK government issues travel document to control order detainee Mahmoud Abu Rideh after horrific suicide attempt (July 2009), Secret evidence in the case of the North West 10 “terror suspects” (August 2009), Letting go of control orders (for the Guardian, September 2009), Another Blow To Britain’s Crumbling Control Order Regime (September 2009), UK Judge Approves Use of Secret Evidence in Guantánamo Case (November 2009), Calling Time On The Use Of Secret Evidence In The UK (December 2009), Compensation for control orders is a distraction (for the Guardian, January 2010), Control Orders Take Another Blow: Libyan Cartoonist Freed (Detainee DD) (January 2010), Control Orders: Solicitors’ Evidence before the Joint Committee on Human Rights, February 3, 2010 and Control Orders: Special Advocates’ Evidence before the Joint Committee on Human Rights, February 3, 2010 (both February 2010), Will Parliament Rid Us of the Cruel and Unjust Control Order Regime? (February 2010), Don’t renew control orders, CAMPACC, JUSTICE and the Joint Committee on Human Rights tell MPs (February 2010), Fahad Hashmi and Terrorist Hysteria in US Courts (April 2010), 98 MPs Who Supported Human Rights While Countering Terrorism (May 2010), UK Terror Ruling Provides Urgent Test for New Government (May 2010), An uncivilized society (in the Guardian), New letter to MPs asking them to oppose the use of secret evidence in UK courts, and to support the return from Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer (May 2010), Torture Complicity Under the Spotlight in Europe (Part One): The UK (July 2010), Fighting Ghosts: An Interview with Husein Al-Samamara (July 2010), Ruling sends message on control orders (for the Guardian, July 2010), UK Judges Endorse Double Standards on Terror Deportations (August 2010), In Memoriam: Faraj Hassan Alsaadi (1980-2010) (August 2010), An interview with Faraj Hassan Alsaadi (from 2007) (August 2010).