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Human rights
solicitor attacks ‘Soviet-style justice’ in UK
No access to lawyers for Belmarsh internees
A
MAN jailed indefinitely without trial because he acted as a
security-cleared interpreter to Muslim prisoners …
A victim of torture sent to Broadmoor hospital for the criminally
insane after his detention without trial caused him to suffer a
mental breakdown and left him unable to eat and too weak to walk …
Men interned on evidence extracted under torture and others detained
without trial for crimes they have already been acquitted of in a
court of law …
Welcome to life on the internee wing of Belmarsh Prison – a jail now
dubbed Britain’s very own Guantanamo Bay. An investigation by the
Sunday Herald has uncovered what civil rights campaigners call “the
shocking truth” about the way in which some 17 Arab men living in
the UK have been taken from British streets and held indefinitely in
jail without trial.
Liberty, the UK’s leading human rights group, says Belmarsh is an
example of “Soviet-style justice” in the UK.
On Thursday, the House of Lords – the UK’s highest court of appeal –
retired to consider their verdict on Home Secretary David Blunkett’s
use of internment rules which came into effect in December 2001.
They are likely to come to a decision before Christmas.
Gareth Peirce, the acclaimed human rights solicitor who represented
the Birmingham Six and is acting for most of the Belmarsh detainees,
believes the men have suffered human rights abuses.
One of her clients – a Moroccan who has lived in the UK for 18 years
– was detained, according to a letter from the Home Secretary’s
lawyers, because he had visited two Arabs in Belmarsh Prison.
Peirce said: “He had done so as an interpreter and had been cleared
by police and security at Belmarsh before doing so. Each revelation
as to what has been the true basis of internment and how it has been
dealt with has left us increasingly horrified.”
One Palestinian detainee, a victim of Israeli torture, was granted
refugee status in 1997. Peirce said that he was well-known in his
community as, “a highly eccentric and damaged individual, with a
burning commitment to helping others, in particular fundraising for
charities in Afghanistan” to provide schools, wells and support for
widows. Peirce said he sent all money raised to a UN charity.
“This man, already traumatised, immediately began to react to the
reintroduction of prison and became gravely disturbed in Belmarsh,”
said Peirce. After 18 months detention, he “deteriorated into a
life-threatening state, being unable to eat and too weak to be out
of a wheelchair”.
He is suicidal and has self-harmed on a number of occasions. Like
the rest of the detainees, he is locked up 22 hours a day. He was
later moved, on the Home Secretary’s orders, to Broadmoor, even
though staff there objected saying “he was not at all dangerous but
clearly suffering the effects of being confined in Belmarsh.”
Some detainees were interned because the Algerian government claimed
they were connected to Islamic terrorists. According to Peirce,
Algeria passed such information to the UK and it was used to make
detentions even though it had “been clearly obtained through the use
of torture”. Other claims against the men were extracted during
interrogation sessions by US soldiers in Guantanamo Bay.
In a case described by Peirce, an Algerian was interned despite the
fact that a court had cleared him of wrong doing, finding that he
was in fact trying to help Algerian villagers who were victims of
massacres by sending them aid.
Under the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act Blunkett has the
power to detain the men without trial, because their suspected
involvement in international terrorism creates a “public emergency
threatening the life of the nation”.
In order to imprison these men indefinitely the UK had to withdraw
from European treaty agreements preventing member states from using
internment without trial.
Peirce says the men should be tried under existing laws, but adds
that the government has been unable to prosecute them conventionally
because “the evidence against them is dependent either upon
phone-tap evidence which we do not make admissible in criminal
proceedings in this country” or was based on intelligence reports
which MI5 want to remain secret.
Peirce said that promises to make sure the men had access to lawyers
and other legal safeguards were broken by the government.
“Ten individuals were seized from their homes the morning after the
legislation was passed and taken straight to Belmarsh Prison,” she
said. “Their concerned families had no idea what had happened to
them or where they had gone. Nobody was informed that they were
arrested. By complete accident a number of them arrived on a landing
in Belmarsh where one remand prisoner had a phone card and was able
to phone his solicitor and inform her that a number of people were
in Belmarsh who were not being allowed to make phone calls and who
needed a lawyer urgently. Belmarsh refused visits until after
Christmas.”
The evidence against the men amounted to a “few lines”, according to
Peirce. “These were assertions, unsupported by any evidence
whatsoever,” she said. “The failure to provide any evidence in real
terms against the detainees was not just shocking but baffling in
terms of the reassurance Parliament had been given.”
Those who were detained in custody were never arrested or even
questioned by the police. Additionally, the Crown Prosecution
Service (CPS) admitted that it had never been asked to decide
whether or not the men could have been prosecuted
Peirce said: “In respect of internment … Parliament was successfully
misled. There was never any consideration of prosecution of these
men. Every single principle of open justice has been violated. They
do not know what is said against them. What is said is said in
secret. The state no longer has to prove its case beyond reasonable
doubt. All that is required is that the Home Secretary had a
reasonable suspicion. We must be very careful in our quest for
national security that we do not totally undermine the values of
democracy.”
By Neil Mackay, Investigations Editor
Source: Sunday Herald
10 October 2004
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