Belmarsh, control orders, deportation and extradition

On Saturday, I was honoured to be invited along as a guest speaker at an event entitled, “Exile: Dreams and Nightmares” at the BFI (British Film Institute), part of an impressive week-long programme to mark Refugee Week. Saturday’s event featured four powerful documentaries by Mohamed Maklouf, a film-maker, journalist and Libyan exile, including “Home In […]

In a front-page story today, “Tony Blair knew of secret policy on terror interrogations,” the Guardian follows up on the story of Britain’s secret interrogation policy for terror suspects abroad (which I reported here, based on David Miliband’s testimony on Tuesday to the Parliamentary Committee on Foreign Affairs), stating that former Prime Minister Tony Blair […]

Is it possible to get the truth about torture out of the British government, or is it easier to get blood out of a stone? I ask only because on Tuesday, in another polished performance — which shows that he has the skills under pressure that might one day come in useful if there is […]

Four years late, the Law Lords finally put the British government’s anti-terror policies under the spotlight on Wednesday by delivering a resounding repudiation of the government’s use of secret evidence to impose control orders on alleged terror suspects (the full judgment is here). An unjustified stranglehold on liberty: the control orders Introduced in March 2005 […]

For the Guardian’s Comment is free, “Death in Libya, betrayal in the West” is an article I wrote in response to news of the death, in a Libyan jail, of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi. A prisoner of the “War on Terror,” who was subjected to “extraordinary rendition” and torture for four years before being returned to […]

The Brad Blog, which picked up on the story of the strange death of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi shortly after I published the first account in the Western media on Sunday evening, asked a question yesterday evening that I had been asking myself throughout the day: So, it’s been about 16 hours since we covered indie […]

For the Guardian’s Comment is free, “Taking liberties with our justice system” is an article I wrote about the largely overlooked plight of Britain’s untried “terror suspects,” a group of men — mostly foreign residents, but also including British nationals — who are imprisoned, or held under a strict form of house arrest, either on […]

Last month, as I reported in an article, Britain’s Guantánamo: Calling For An End To Secret Evidence, Diane Abbott MP chaired a meeting in a packed committee room in the House of Commons, in which politicians, lawyers and human rights campaigners came together to discuss how to both confront and publicize the British government’s increasing […]

On Monday March 30, in a committee room in the House of Commons, Diane Abbott MP chaired a meeting entitled, “Britain’s Guantánamo? The use of secret evidence and evidence based on torture in the UK courts,” to discuss the stories of some of the men held as “terror suspects” on the basis of secret evidence, […]

I am a 42-year old married man with two children, who has lived in this country for almost 18 years. I was detained in September 2005 under immigration powers, and I have been informed, to my surprise, that I am a threat to national security. Until now I have not been told what the allegation […]