Belmarsh, control orders, deportation and extradition

According to the British government, a Kurdish Iraqi imam living in the north of England was such a threat to national security that, for the last three years and four months, he was subjected to a control order, a form of house arrest involving, but not limited to curfews, tagging, Home Office vetting of all […]

For the Guardian’s Comment is free, “Letting go of control orders” is an article I wrote examining whether the government’s much-criticized system of house arrest for terror suspects held without charge or trial on the basis of secret evidence is on the verge of collapse after a judge quashed the control order that had kept […]

The following account of a hearing last week in SIAC (the Special Immigration Appeals Commission), regarding the bail hearings of seven Pakistani students seized in April as part of a round-up of twelve men in connection with a purported “terror plot,” was written by Maude Casey, a campaigner from Brighton, who was the only non-legal […]

Today, I received disturbing news from the British human rights organization Cageprisoners, which announced that, on July 18, Mahmoud Abu Rideh, the stateless Palestinian who has been imprisoned without charge or trial or held under a control order for seven and a half years, “was taken to hospital having severely self-harmed.” The press release continued, […]

For the Guardian’s Comment is free, “Dismantle the secret state” is an article I’ve written as part of the Guardian’s week-long “Slow torture” series, which is described as follows: The government’s powers to impose restrictions on terror suspects — without a trial — amounting to virtual house arrest have been condemned as draconian by civil […]

For the Guardian’s Comment is free, “Testing control orders” is an article I wrote examining the latest developments in the British government’s increasingly beleaguered policy of detaining “terror suspects” without charge or trial on the basis of secret evidence, using draconian control orders which constitute a form of house arrest. The article deals with the […]

Earlier today, I published two articles about the suffering of control order detainee Mahmoud Abu Rideh and his family — “Seven years of madness: the harrowing tale of Mahmoud Abu Rideh and Britain’s anti-terror laws,” and “Would you be able to cope?: Letters by the children of control order detainee Mahmoud Abu Rideh” — as […]

In an article earlier today, “Seven years of madness: the harrowing tale of Mahmoud Abu Rideh and Britain’s anti-terror laws,” I told the story of Mahmoud Abu Rideh, a Palestinian-born British resident with a British wife and six British children, who had a hearing at the High Court in London today to consider his request […]

Today, Mahmoud Abu Rideh, a Palestinian-born British resident with a British wife and six British children, has a hearing at the High Court in London to consider his request for internationally valid travel documents which would allow him to leave the country. On the basis of secret evidence, which has not been disclosed to him, […]

Befriending dictators, as the UK and US have been doing with Libya’s Colonel Gaddafi since British Prime Minister Tony Blair made an official visit to Libya in March 2004, brings with it its own set of unprincipled compromises. In Libya’s case, the resultant hypocrisy has been starkly delineated. Although reviled as a sponsor of international […]