Belmarsh, control orders, deportation and extradition

In the Court of Appeal yesterday morning, six former Guantánamo prisoners — Bisher al-Rawi, Jamil El-Banna, Richard Belmar, Omar Deghayes, Binyam Mohamed and Martin Mubanga — won a resounding victory against the government, when three senior judges, including Lord Neuberger, the Master of the Rolls, overturned a ruling that, for the first time in British [...]

In a previous article, I wrote about Mustapha Labsi, an Algerian terror suspect, shuttled between various European prisons for the last nine years, who was deported from Slovakia last week “in clear violation of Slovakia’s international obligations,” as Amnesty International explained. Mustapha Labsi was held in Belmarsh until 2006, when he was extradited to France [...]

On April 19, Mustapha Labsi, an Algerian terror suspect shuttled around prisons in Europe since his arrest in the UK in February 2001, lost his struggle to resist being forcibly repatriated. Labsi was returned to Algeria from Slovakia, even though, as Amnesty International explained, this was “in clear violation of Slovakia’s international obligations.” Pointing out [...]

In America’s post-9/11 zeal for elevating terror suspects to the status of supermen, existentially threatening the very life of the United States in an unprecedented manner (rather than managing one massive attack on the US through the intelligence agencies’ inability to communicate with one another), Guantánamo, Bagram, Abu Ghraib and the CIA’s torture dungeons are [...]

Former Guantánamo prisoner Omar Deghayes and I have just returned from an excellent week-long trip to Scotland, where we were promoting the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (directed by Polly Nash and myself) as part of an ongoing UK tour of the film. We also encouraged audiences to write to foreign [...]

Tomorrow (March 1), Parliament will vote on whether to renew the government’s control order regime, a form of house arrest for alleged terrorist suspects, who are held without charge or trial on the basis of secret evidence. This lamentable system was established in haste in 2005, when the Law Lords ruled that the government’s previous [...]

Since last June, when, in the wake of a significant ruling in the European Court of Human Rights, the Law Lords ruled that imposing control orders breaches Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees the right to a fair trial, the system established in haste and paranoia in early 2005 has [...]

On February 3, 2010, the Joint Committee on Human Rights, comprising members of the House of Commons and the House of Lords, met to hear oral evidence on “Counter-Terrorism Policy and Human Rights: Control Orders” from two solicitors representing control order detainees, and three Special Advocates representing the detainees during discussions of secret evidence in [...]

On February 3, 2010, the Joint Committee on Human Rights, comprising members of the House of Commons and the House of Lords, met to hear oral evidence on “Counter-Terrorism Policy and Human Rights: Control Orders” from two solicitors representing control order detainees, and three Special Advocates representing the detainees during discussions of secret evidence in [...]

The news that Ziyad Ali Hashem, a control order detainee in the UK (previously identified only as DD) has had his control order lifted elicits two particular responses from those who have been aware of his case since he was first deprived of his liberty in November 2005: firstly, relief that his ordeal is at [...]