10.11.10
Well, well. I’m not holding my breath, but the Observer‘s announcement on Sunday that “The scrapping of control orders for terror suspects moved a step closer last night when … senior Whitehall security sources broke ranks to reveal that MI5 was ‘not wedded’ to keeping the contentious regime” is promising. A form of virtual house […]
5.11.10
I was in the United States, campaigning against torture as part of “Berkeley Says No to Torture” Week, when a new book of essays by human rights lawyer Gareth Peirce, Dispatches from the Dark Side: On Torture and the Death of Justice, was published in the UK. In these essays, originally published in the London […]
3.11.10
Since the General Election in May, when the Liberal Democrats formed an unlikely alliance with the Tories, cracks in the coalition have been kept to a minimum, although this, hopefully, is about to change. The battleground is not, sadly, the all-out and ill-conceived assault on the poor unleashed in George Osborne’s smug and cruel comprehensive […]
28.9.10
Time will tell if Labour’s new leader, Ed Miliband, is a genuine force for change, but I was impressed during his campaign that he so clearly recognized that the Labour Party had failed and that criticizing the electorate was both insulting and counter-productive. In an interview with the Guardian in August, for example, he stated, […]
26.8.10
The following interview with Faraj Hassan Alsaadi was conducted by Cageprisoners and published in August 2007, and I’m cross-posting it in memory of Faraj, who died in a motorbike accident on August 16. Imprisoned without charge or trial, or held under a control order, from May 2002 until December 2009, when his control order was […]
26.8.10
As I sit here trying to come to terms with the death of Faraj Hassan Alsaadi, who died in a motorbike accident on August 16, it seems to me that nothing can throw us as much as an unexpected death. In Faraj’s case, it is deeply distressing that he leaves behind a wife and three […]
3.8.10
Last Thursday, in a little-noticed ruling in the Court of Appeal, three judges — Lord Justice Jacob, Lord Justice Sullivan and Sir David Keene — turned down appeals submitted by eight foreign nationals against the Home Secretary’s decision to deport them “on grounds of national security.” The government’s decision had previously been upheld by the […]
28.7.10
For the Guardian’s Comment is free, “Ruling sends message on control orders” is an article I wrote following a Court of Appeal ruling that two former control order detainees — AE, an Iraqi national and an imam in the north of England, and AF, a dual British/Libyan national, who was born in Derby — are […]
5.7.10
Three weeks ago, as I explained in an article at the time, the BBC’s Newsnight broadcast an extraordinary insight into the bleak conditions under which Hussain Alsamamara, a Jordanian terror suspect held under a form of house arrest, is obliged to live. Like a few dozen other terror suspects — both British and foreign nationals […]
2.7.10
Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, when the United States — the post-World War II driver of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Geneva Conventions, prohibiting torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment — went off the rails and introduced a horrendous global program of rendition, torture, arbitrary detention […]
Investigative journalist, author, campaigner, commentator and public speaker. Recognized as an authority on Guantánamo and the “war on terror.” Co-founder, Close Guantánamo and We Stand With Shaker. Also, photo-journalist (The State of London), and singer and songwriter (The Four Fathers).
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