I wrote the following article for the “Close Guantánamo” website, which I established in January 2012, on the 10th anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo, with the US attorney Tom Wilner. Please join us — just an email address is required to be counted amongst those opposed to the ongoing existence of Guantánamo, and to receive updates of our activities by email.
Congratulations to Sam Raphael and Ruth Blakeley of The Rendition Project, Crofton Black of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, and all those who worked with them, for the publication of “CIA Torture Unredacted,” their 400-page report on the CIA’s post-9/11 torture program, which was launched in London last Wednesday, and is available online, in its entirety, here — and see here for a chapter by chapter breakdown.
The report is the culmination of nine years’ work, which began in 2010 with funding from the UK-based Economic and Social Research Council, and which led, in May 2013, to the launch of The Rendition Project website, which, as Ian Cobain and James Ball explained for the Guardian, “mapped the US government’s global kidnap and secret detention programme, shedding unprecedented light on one of the most controversial secret operations of recent years.”
At the time of its initial launch in 2013, The Rendition Project drew on previous work conducted by researchers for a variety of NGOs and international bodies, which included an influential report for the Council of Europe about secret prisons and rendition in Europe, published by Swiss Senator Dick Marty in 2007, a detailed analysis of the secret detention programme for a UN study in 2010, for which I was the lead author, and in which, as I described it in an Al-Jazeera article in 2014, “I sought to ascertain the identities of the 94 ‘ghost prisoners’ in CIA custody — including 28 subjected to ‘enhanced interrogation’ — who were referred to in a memo from 2005 by [US government] lawyer Steven G. Bradbury that was released by the Obama administration in April 2009. Another major report, by the Constitution Project, was published in 2013.
Is there no end to this government’s flagrant disregard for the fundamental rights of its citizens? Today, by 305 votes to 239, the House of Commons overturned amendments to the current Immigration Bill made by the House of Lords, which concerned home secretary Theresa May’s proposals to strip naturalised British citizens of their citizenship without any form of due process, even if doing so makes the individuals in question stateless.
Back in March, as I described it in my article, “The UK’s Unacceptable Obsession with Stripping British Citizens of Their UK Nationality” MPs first voted, by 297 votes to 34, to pass the citizenship-stripping clause, which Theresa May had added to the Immigration Bill in January, and which, due to its addition at the last minute, had not received any scrutiny. Since 2002, the government has had the power to remove the citizenship of dual nationals who they believe to have done something “seriously prejudicial” to the UK, but May’s new legislation was designed to increase her powers, “allowing her to remove the nationality of those who have acquired British citizenship, even if it will make them stateless, if they have done something ‘seriously prejudicial to the vital interests’ of the UK,” as described in December by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, which has been covering this story closely.
In April, by 242 votes to 180, the House of Lords replaced the proposal with an amendment requiring it to be further considered by a joint committee of the Commons and Lords before being implemented, an eminently sensible proposal that should not have been overturned by 305 MPs in the House of Commons. Read the rest of this entry »
Yesterday, I published an article entitled, “The UK’s Dangerous and Unacceptable Obsession with Stripping British Citizens of Their UK Nationality,” in which I examined the disturbing trend, under Home Secretary Theresa May, to strip naturalised UK citizens (dual nationals, in other words) of their nationality without any form of due process if she suspects that they have done something “seriously prejudicial” to the UK.
In particular, my article covered Theresa May’s latest plan to extend these tyrannical powers to “deprive someone of their citizenship even if that would make them stateless, but only if the citizenship has been gained through naturalisation and the Home Secretary is satisfied that the deprivation is, in the words of a government new clause introduced by her in the House of Commons, ‘conducive to the public good because the person, while having that citizenship status, has conducted him or herself in a manner which is seriously prejudicial to the vital interests of the United Kingdom.'”
The words above, by Baroness Smith of Basildon, are from a debate in the House of Lords on March 17, 2014 on Theresa May’s proposals, which are contained in Clause 60 of the proposed new Immigration Act (and entitled, “Deprivation if conduct seriously prejudicial to vital interests of the UK”). Baroness Smith also noted, “Currently, the law allows the Home Secretary to deprive a person of their citizenship status for two reasons: first, if the person acquired it using fraud, false representation or concealment of a material fact; or, secondly, if the Home Secretary is satisfied that, in doing so, it is conducive to the public good and that the person would not be left stateless as a result. Clause 60 seeks to amend the second condition to, in the words of a Minister in the other place, ‘ensure that individuals who are a serious threat to this country cannot retain citizenship simply because deprivation would leave them stateless.'” Read the rest of this entry »
In January, Theresa May, the British Home Secretary, secured cross-party support for an alarming last-minute addition to the current Immigration Bill, allowing her to strip foreign-born British citizens of their citizenship, even if it leaves them stateless.
The timing appeared profoundly cynical. May already has the power to strip dual nationals of their citizenship, as a result of legislation passed in 2002 “enabling the Home Secretary to remove the citizenship of any dual nationals who [have] done something ‘seriously prejudicial’ to the UK,” as the Bureau of Investigative Journalism described it in February 2013, but “the power had rarely been used before the current government.”
In December, the Bureau, which has undertaken admirable investigation into the Tory-led mission to strip people of their citizenship, further clarified the situation, pointing out that the existing powers are part of the British Nationality Act, and allow the Home Secretary to “terminate the British citizenship of dual-nationality individuals if she believes their presence in the UK is ‘not conducive to the public good’, or if they have obtained their citizenship through fraud.” The Bureau added, “Deprivation of citizenship orders can be made with no judicial approval in advance, and take immediate effect — the only route for people to argue their case is through legal appeals. In all but two known cases, the orders have been issued while the individual is overseas, leaving them stranded abroad during legal appeals that can take years” — and also, of course, raising serious questions about who is supposedly responsible for them when their British citizenship is removed. Read the rest of this entry »
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, singer/songwriter (The Four Fathers).
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