Belmarsh, control orders, deportation and extradition

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

On Wednesday, 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 — who are confined to their homes for up to […]

Just ten days ago, I drafted a letter for readers to send to their MPs, asking for their opinions on four particular topics: the closure of Guantánamo and the return to the UK of British resident Shaker Aamer; the use of secret evidence in UK courts; the continued existence of control orders for British and […]

Some horrors may await us on the economic front when George Osborne, the new Chancellor of the Exchequer, finishes sharpening his scythe, but for those of us who care about human rights and civil liberties, and who have been aghast for the last 13 years at the Labour government’s paranoid, cruel and chaotic anti-terror legislation, […]

For the Guardian’s Comment is free, “An uncivilized society” is an article I wrote analyzing the new coalition government’s first major test of its commitment to long-established legal principles, and to Britain’s human rights obligations. As I also explained in a previous article, these were tested on Monday when, in the Special Immigration Appeals Commissions […]

Today, the new coalition government faces its first major test regarding the confusing legacy of anti-terror laws inherited from the Labour government, after Mr. Justice Mitting, the judge in the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC), the body charged with handling terror cases involving deportation, refused to allow the government to deport two Pakistani students, despite […]

Over the last few months of the Labour government, at screenings of the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo,”  former prisoner Omar Deghayes and myself handed out copies of a letter to foreign secretary David Miliband requesting the return from Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison, and […]