Tuesday, December 16, 2014 

Two nations, the same words, the same outcome.

I can't breathe.  The words spoken by Eric Garner after a NYPD officer placed him in a chokehold, before he was then slammed to the ground.  Within minutes he was dead.  The decision by a grand jury not to indict the officer who placed him in the chokehold, coming just a week after a grand jury similarly declined to indict the officer who shot dead Michael Brown, sparking riots in Brown's hometown of Ferguson, has led to protests by sportsmen and celebrities.

I can't breathe.  The words spoken by Jimmy Mubenga, after three G4S guards meant to be supervising his deportation forced him forward in his seat, despite his already being handcuffed from behind.  Except, it's now difficult to know if that's what happened as the jury at the manslaughter trial brought following the unlawful killing verdict at Mubenga's inquest found all three not guilty, and within hours of their being sent out to consider their verdict.

This isn't the first time the verdict of an inquest and the subsequent manslaughter trial have differed.  Most notably, an inquest jury found Ian Tomlinson had been unlawfully killed, dying not long after he was pushed to the ground by PC Simon Harwood.  The jury at his trial similarly was not convinced beyond reasonable doubt he was responsible for Tomlinson's death, a decision which could be rationalised by how there was a difference of opinion between the pathologists who carried out consecutive autopsies.  The first post-mortem was performed by Freddy Patel, an incompetent who was suspended at the time of the trial and has since been struck off, details the jury were not told as they were deemed prejudicial.  Patel also poured away the liquid he found in Tomlinson's abdomen, which could have determined beyond doubt the cause of death.

The jury at the Mubenga trial were not told of the inquest's unlawful killing verdict, rather more understandably, nor that two of the guards had "racist" jokes on their phones.  We can't of course know which parts of the evidence the jury accepted and those they didn't: the guards denied hearing Mubenga crying out that he couldn't breathe, something that passengers seated much further away on the plane did and testified they had.  They also denied putting Mubenga into a position known to have the potential to cause breathing difficulties, which again witnesses testified they had.  The prosecution case also included reconstructing the alleged restraint placed on Mubenga, with a section of a Boeing 777 constructed in the court, members of the jury placed in the same position as Mubenga was.

We can then only surmise at how they reached their verdict.  We know juries are reluctant to convict police officers or others in positions of authority, whether they be British or American.  Just last week a jury cleared two officers of attacking a man with autism in Luton, despite hearing a recording of one of the pair referring to him as a "fucking Paki" moments prior to the altercation.  The jury seemingly accepted the injuries Faruk Ali sustained were due to his falling into bins when grabbed by one of the officers, not the punches claimed by Ali's family.  This giving of the benefit of the doubt is perhaps explained somewhat by polls showing a healthy majority retain trust in the police, one survey finding 65% would generally trust officers to be truthful.  Only teachers, doctors and judges are trusted more.  Journalists and politicians rank along the bottom.

Jimmy Mubenga wasn't only black; he was also being deported following a conviction for actual bodily harm.  All three of the guards found not guilty are white, the youngest 39.  The jury accepted their argument they were simply "trying to do a very difficult job in difficult circumstances, to the best of their ability".  You have to suspect that Mubenga, unlike Garner, will not have footballers or say, Idris Elba, donning t-shirts featuring some of his last words in protest.

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12/16/2014 11:59:00 pm | | | links to this post

Thursday, July 19, 2012 

No alarms and no surprises redux.

Hearing today of the verdict in the Ian Tomlinson case, it was difficult not to be reminded of Blackstone's formulation. William Blackstone, the 18th century author of the Commentary on the Laws of England, had it that it was better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.

This is not to say that PC Simon Harwood was guilty of anything more on the 1st of April 2009 than common assault. The jury more than understandably decided that it was not proven beyond reasonable doubt that Harwood caused the manslaughter of Tomlinson, and we have to respect that decision. You really can't envy those chosen to serve on this particular case, thanks to the incompetence of Freddy Patel, the pathologist who carried out the first autopsy on Tomlinson. They had to reach their decision based on conflicting accounts: Patel continues to maintain that Tomlinson died of natural causes, coincidentally just a matter of minutes after he was pushed over and struck by Harwood, while the two other doctors who subsequently carried out a re-examination decided the cause of death was internal bleeding caused by trauma associated with a blow to the abdomen. The material that would have established the cause beyond all doubt was poured away by Patel, who when giving evidence continued to insist that the bloody fluids found within Tomlinson's stomach cavity were ascites stained with blood, rather than just blood. The Crown Prosecution Service's initial decision not to bring charges was justified on this irreconcilable difference of medical opinions. The jury was not told that Patel had been suspended last year by the General Medical Council after similar failings in the autopsy he carried out on Sally White, who he found had died of natural causes. Her body had been discovered in the house belonging to Anthony Hardy, who later pleaded guilty to the murder of White and two other women.

In fairness to Patel, he wasn't aware when he conducted the post-mortem of what had happened to Tomlinson just a few minutes before he died, the footage not being uncovered until it was sent to the Guardian a week after the protests. New evidence was also presented during the trial which hadn't been given during the inquest, with trauma specialist Alastair Wilson hypothesising that the internal bleeding could have started before Tomlinson came into contact with Harwood. All the same, it still raises the question of why it was decided that Patel's suspension was considered to be prejudicial, and so withheld from the jury. It may not have made any difference, just as it's doubtful that had they known of Harwood's chequered disciplinary record, including his resignation from the Met following a road rage incident and subsequent rejoining of the force with Surrey police it would have changed their decision. When it was a majority decision of 10 to 2 though, after four days of deliberations, it could potentially have led to a retrial instead of a not guilty verdict.

All this considered, it was clearly the right decision by the CPS to change their initial decision and bring the manslaughter charges following the unlawful killing verdict of the inquest's jury. While both verdicts were delivered under the same burden of proof, beyond reasonable doubt, there's clearly a massive difference between a jury deciding a police officer was guilty of unintentionally killing a man through inappropriate use of force and a jury deciding that the police officer should potentially go to prison for doing so. Harwood's behaviour, though reprehensible as there was no reason whatsoever for him to push Tomlinson, would have been unlikely to have done lasting damage to someone who was in good health. Indeed, as I previously noted, it's a wonder there weren't far worse injuries on the day considering the number of protesters who were hit repeatedly on the head with batons.

In this respect, as much as Harwood on the day was lashing out anyone who got in his way following the humiliation he felt after failing to arrest a man who vandalised a police van, Duncan Campbell is right to lay the blame at the feet of those who authorised the completely counter-productive tactic of kettling protesters, to say nothing of the storming of the Climate Camp, later ruled to have been an abuse of power. Regardless of whether there had been violence or not, and much of it on the day was limited to the smashing of windows and spraying of grafitti rather than attacks on police, who were in any case mostly watching as it went on, officers had been briefed that a bunch of black flag wielding anarchists were coming from across Europe to lay waste to the City, while senior officers were telling the media of how ready they were for just such an eventuality.

Unlike some others, I'm not so sure that this verdict will make police officers feel that they're above the law: while it's true that there has still not been a officer convicted of murder or manslaughter while on duty since 1986, it only hasn't in this case thanks to the disagreement between pathologists. With recording equipment now ubiquitous, the chances of abuse going unchallenged have also never been slighter. Just as the police are so keen on recording us, so on protests from now on we should be recording their every move. And considering what's happened, they can hardly complain.

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7/19/2012 06:54:00 pm | | | links to this post

Wednesday, May 04, 2011 

No alarms and no surprise revisited.

If it wasn't apparent before, it ought to be now. The real reason why it's such a rare occurrence for police officers who've killed members of the public while on duty to face trial is because when the facts of similar cases are laid out before juries, whether in the form of health and safety prosecutions or inquests, they have this irritating habit of finding either the defendants guilty or that the victim was unlawfully killed.

This isn't to suggest that the director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer, who made his name as lawyer working on human rights cases conspired with the police when he decided that PC Simon Harwood would not face any criminal charges over his assault on Ian Tomlinson. Rather, it seems he fell into the trap of believing that it would be too difficult to convince a jury beyond reasonable doubt that the actions of the officer lead directly to the Tomlinson's death. Considering the differences of opinion between the pathologists, with the first, Dr Freddy Patel ruling that Tomlinson had died from a heart attack rather than internal bleeding caused after he fell following being pushed, it would have hardly been an easy case, and one on which there would have been much media attention.

Nonetheless, and indeed exactly because as the Guardian puts it there is nothing more serious than the state taking the life of one of its subjects with the exception of agents of the state covering just such an incident up, Starmer ought to have erred on the side of letting a jury hear all the evidence. Such a case would have been clearly in the public interest. The virtues of taking just such a nuanced approach could hardly have been more vindicated than by the inquest into Tomlinson's death, helmed by Judge Peter Thornton QC. Unlike in the inquest into the death of Jean Charles de Menezes where the coroner disgracefully decided that the jury could not reach a verdict of unlawful killing, Thornton gave the jury the option, while stressing that they had to be certain beyond reasonable doubt, the same legal distinction as that required in a criminal trial. Having expected a longer wait, the court was relatively startled when the jury took just under three and a half hours to decide that Tomlinson had been unlawfully killed.

Considering the evidence presented, this wasn't exactly surprising. PC Simon Harwood himself was almost the definition of an unreliable witness, repeatedly changing his story when it was challenged, not just by the lawyers for Tomlinson's family, but also by the quality and quantity of the material shot on the day of the G20 protests. Having initially claimed to investigators that Tomlinson had been defiant and resisting orders when he pushed him, he still maintained that the strike and push which felled him were justified in the circumstances, rather than say prodding him, taking him by the shoulders and physically moving him away, or, heaven forfend, forcefully but politely asking him to move faster. Whether or not Harwood, who in the minutes before pushing Tomlinson had swung a coat at a protester, knocked over a BBC cameraman and used a "palm strike" against someone else, was acting out his anger and embarrassment following his failure to arrest a man who had vandalised a police van is known only to him.

Similarly, Dr Freddy Patel was left with little option than to change his original opinion faced with the three other pathologists and other medical experts all deciding that Tomlinson's cause of death was abdominal bleeding. Patel was admittedly put at a disadvantage from the very beginning, the police having told him when he was brought in to perform the post-mortem that Tomlinson had not been involved in any public disorder and that he had sleeping rough for the last 20 years, just one of the many untruths originally put out to the media by the Met, along with the claim that they had been assaulted with missiles while tending to Tomlinson. Even so, Patel erred in not retaining or sampling the three litres of intra-abdominal fluid blood or intra-abdominal fluid with blood which had collected in Tomlinson's abdomen, which would have proved the key to whether he had died from internal bleeding as the other pathologists believed. In any case, that Patel had previously been criticised for discussing confidential details in public, as well as being involved in the failings concerning Anthony Hardy ought to have disqualified him from any possibility of carrying out the autopsy.

As wearingly familiar as this sad tale of changing stories, incompetence and abuses of power is, the real outrage is that the overall cause remains the same. Just as the officers on the morning of the 22nd of July 2005 were briefed that those they were after were "up for it" and ready to commit acts of mass murder, giving the impression that lethal force was permissible even when it hadn't been authorised, so the police prior to the G20 had made clear just how determined they were to crack down hard on those who were out to smash up the City. We duly saw police medics brandishing batons, those without the first idea how to "safely" use a truncheon flinging it around, and of course, the storming of the entirely peaceful Climate Camp, since found to have been illegal. Ian Tomlinson died both as he was in the wrong place at the wrong time and because he was vulnerable to just such an injury as he received; dozens of others got cracked heads or worse just for daring to take part in a demonstration. It would be nice to think that following such regrettable incidents that future policing would have been rethought, but no, as the example of Alfie Meadows so pungently demonstrates.

Whether Simon Harwood will now face a manslaughter charge following the CPS review remains to be seen. Doubtless his representatives will argue that the inquest and the coverage of it has damaged his chances of receiving a fair trial. What hopefully will change is the giving of the benefit of the doubt to the police and the authorities when such prosecutions are first considered, something which has gone on for far too long, as does the condescending view that juries are incapable of following or making a judgement on complicated, conflicting medical evidence. Justice, even if it involves the throwing out of cases by judges or acquittals which result in questions over whether a prosecution should have been brought, has to been seen to be done.

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5/04/2011 10:46:00 pm | | | links to this post

Thursday, July 22, 2010 

No alarms and no surprises.

Hands up those surprised in the slightest that the Crown Prosecution Service has decided that no charges will be brought against the Metropolitan police over the death of Ian Tomlinson? None of you? Jolly good. Finally, maybe, the message is now starting to get into the thick skulls of everyone that whenever the police, either accidentally or in the most brutal manner imaginable kill members of the public that it's only in incredibly rare circumstances that the officers themselves face prosecution. The only example in recent memory of a police officer facing a charge of both murder and manslaughter as a result of their actions while on duty was in the case of James Ashley, who was shot dead in his bedroom during a botched police raid back in 1998. The officer was acquitted of both charges when the judge agreed that he had acted in self-defence, believing he was about to be shot himself. This was despite Ashley being naked, acting in a daze as he had just been woken up, and having no weapon to hand. Last year Sussex police apologised to Ashley's family, admitted negligence and paid compensation.

Since then, no further charges in similar cases have been forthcoming. There were none when 10 bullets were pumped into the head and shoulder of Jean Charles de Menezes, the end result of an operation which was memorably described by a Met source as a "complete and utter fuck-up", although there was the small matter of the successful prosecution against the Met on health and safety grounds. There were none when Harry Stanley was shot dead, a Scotsman described to the police as an Irishman carrying a shotgun in a plastic bag which turned out to be a chair leg. Indeed, even though no officer was actually charged with a criminal offence, when the second inquest into his death resulted in a verdict of unlawful killing and the officers responsible were suspended from duty, their colleagues in other armed response units took umbrage and handed their weapons in. Happily, the High Court later overturned the second inquest's result, reinstated the first's open verdict and everything was right with the world again. There were also none when a CO19 officer shot dead Azelle Rodney, despite the Independent Police Complaints Commission agreeing that he was not holding a weapon when the car he was in was surrounded.

In all of those cases the evidence was far more clear-cut than that against the officer who pushed over Ian Tomlinson. True, they all claimed they were acting in self-defence, believing in the case of de Menezes that he was a suicide bomber about to detonate his explosives, while the others believed they were in mortal danger from armed men, something which PC Simon Harwood, as he has been named, clearly couldn't, threatened so visibly as he was by Tomlinson walking away from him and the other officers with his back turned and hands in his pockets. It was always going to be difficult to prove beyond reasonable doubt in a court that the baton strike and push unequivocally led to Tomlinson's death and so justify a charge of manslaughter against Harwood. That was without the conflicting evidence of the 3 post-mortems.

Here's where it gets murky. Dr Freddy Patel, the pathologist who carried out the first autopsy, had previously been criticised by the General Medical Council for discussing confidential details about a man who died in police custody outside of an inquest. He had also performed the post-mortem on Sally White, a 38-year-old woman whose body was found in a locked bedroom in the home of Anthony Hardy, a death initially deemed by the police as suspicious. Patel's verdict was White had died from heart disease, and the investigation was dropped. Hardy subsequently pleaded guilty to the murder of three women, including White. Patel has since been charged with misconduct by the GMC over three other post-mortems he is alleged to have conducted incompetently.

He may eventually face a fifth, if he isn't struck off at the conclusion of the current hearing. Crucially, while concluding that Tomlinson had died from natural causes as a result of coronary artery disease, Patel recorded but did not retain or sample 3 litres of either intraabdominal fluid blood or intraabdominal fluid with blood which had collected in Tomlinson's abdomen. His first report suggested the former, but in a second submitted on the 6th of April this year he settled on the latter. If it was blood, according to the Crown Prosecution Service's statement, that would have been highly significant indicator as to the cause of death. However, when meeting the prosecution team, Patel maintained it mainly consisted of ascites, having formed in Tomlinson's damaged liver, which had been stained with blood. He didn't retain or sample it as he had handled blood his entire professional life and was convinced it was ascites stained with blood rather than just blood. Moreover, he had found no internal rupture which could have led to such a level of blood loss. The doctors who conducted the second and third post-mortems, while acknowledging that Tomlinson had a partially blocked artery, concluded that he had died as a result of abdominal haemorrhage from blunt force trauma to the abdomen, in association with alcoholic cirrhosis of the liver. They believed that when Tomlinson had fell following being pushed, his elbow had impacted in the area of his liver causing an internal bleed and leading directly to his death a matter of minutes later. The only way to be certain would have been to re-examine the fluid initially found by Patel and which he had removed without retaining. For Tomlinson to have died so quickly from blood loss there would have had to have been some kind of internal rupture, something found by none of the doctors. Since Patel was the only doctor to examine Tomlinson's intact body, he was in the best position to have considered the fluid and found a rupture, leaving the CPS to decide the differences between the doctor's opinions was irreconcilable.

The key question is why Patel was chosen to conduct the post-mortem in the first place. It's believed he didn't have a police contract at the time, yet instead of an accredited team of 9 pathologists who more usually deal with suspicious deaths, he was picked by City of London coroner Paul Matthews. At the time the City of London police were handling the investigation rather than the Independent Police Complaints Commission, who despite the circumstances of the death during the G20 protests let them get on with it, not getting involved until the Guardian posted the footage of Tomlinson being pushed over online. Proving there was an active conspiracy to chose an incompetent pathologist will be next to impossible; even if the City of London police were willing to overlook the shortcomings of their colleagues in the Met, and already knew about what was likely to have happened, would their coroner have took part in a cover-up too? The trusty blade of Occam's razor would instead suggest it's more likely to have been incompetence and cock-up, especially when they would have had to depend on Patel either playing along or performing his usual shoddy job, not always guaranteed. That's not to say it couldn't have happened, just less plausible than the alternative.

Clearly, the IPCC should have been in charge from the beginning, although their record is hardly sparkling either. Even so, as the Guardian argues, even with the inherent difficulties in a prosecution case it should have been up for a jury to hear the contradictory post-mortem evidence and make a decision, especially when Patel's standing as a pathologist is so under question. That not even an attempt has been made to prosecute Harwood with assault on the grounds the legal limit for doing so had long since passed is disgraceful. How many other cases involving members of the public are lost each year due to the incredibly short six month timeframe for charges being brought? The pathologist who carried out the second post-mortem has also disputed the CPS's justification for not bringing charges of assault occasioning actual bodily harm saying the injuries which they called minor were in fact more serious, involving a large area of bruising.

This is without considering the crucial test of turning the tables. If a member of the public had hit and then pushed over an on-duty police officer who had their back turned to them, who subsequently died a matter of minutes later, would the CPS then be so reticent in bringing charges, even if there was a similar dispute over the cause of death? While the inquest is still to come, it seems for now that yet again the police have got away scot-free after being involved with a death of an entirely innocent bystander. Public confidence in the police, the CPS and the IPCC relies on their best practice and independence. When on so many separate occasions they seem determined to ignore what is staring them in the face and accept in good faith everything they're told by the police while casting doubt on anything that contradicts those statements it starts to look like collusion. And then the media, police and all right-thinking people wonder how Raoul Moat could possibly be sympathised with, let alone lionised.

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7/22/2010 11:01:00 pm | | | links to this post

Tuesday, December 23, 2008 

Flagrant injustice.

On the 19th of December the prison population stood at 82,918 (DOC), 1,807 places from "Usable Operational Capacity". Operation Safeguard, which involves the use of police and court cells to hold prisoners, "remains activated", and the early release of prisoners to help with overcrowding is also still in operation. This time last year the prison population was 80,707, showing that although the massive rise in prison population since Labour came to power has slowed, it still continues to grow.

It would be nice to imagine that all of those 82,918 individuals spending Christmas in their cells thoroughly deserve to be there, but two thoroughly different cases over the last couple of days show the vagaries of the court system.

How many, honestly, would genuinely argue that a custodial sentence for Robert Holding is either appropriate or likely to protect the public? Holding, a milkman aged 72, rather than also selling orange juice and yoghurts to his customers ran a more exotic sideline, supplying cannabis resin to fellow pensioners. Whether they were genuinely using it as Holding argued for "aches and pains" is open to question, but even if they weren't, who exactly in this scheme was losing out or being harmed? Furthermore, Holding pleaded guilty at the earliest opportunity, and although the article doesn't mention it, it seems likely to be his first offence. Either a fine or at the most a community service order would surely suffice and have seen justice being done; yet Judge Lunt warned Holding that when he passes judgement the "likely outcome is an immediate custodial sentence". This is taking the so-called "drug war" and indeed our laws regarding Class C drugs, as cannabis will remain until the government reclassifies it and as result increases the likelihood of not just the "dealers" like Holding going to prison but also his customers, to ludicrous extremes.

If such apparent injustice doesn't bring the law and the courts into disrepute, then surely injustice piled upon injustice does. The Cardiff Three were convicted after police techniques which were subsequently described by the lord chief justice as "almost passing belief". Not in question was that three witnesses who gave evidence against them were treated in a similar fashion - but yet 20 years after the murder of Lynette White, all of them found themselves being sentenced to 18 months in prison after they were convicted of perjury. Two of them, Leanne Vilday and Angela Psaila, who at the time had been working as prostitutes, pleaded guilty, possibly misguidedly but presumably because they expected that doing so would lessen any custodial sentence. The third defendant, Mark Grommek, pleaded not guilty on the grounds that he had committed perjury under duress, again, something not contested by the court. They were however all convicted on the grounds that the duress they had suffered was not of the kind which was likely to make them either fear for their lives or believe that they were likely to suffer serious injury, making their testimony voluntary rather than involuntary. The judge in the case, Mr Justice Maddison, ruled that despite Grommek's testimony that he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown due to the police's actions, he still had "ample opportunity" to tell the truth. Maddison even accepted that the police's conduct had been "unacceptable in a civilised society", yet he decided that 20 years on, when those really in the dock should be the police themselves, sentences of a year and a half were the best course of redress.

How exactly is the public by served by all 4 individuals spending time in prison? We certainly aren't by the cost, which averages out, according to a written answer given in parliament in April 2006, at a staggering £40,992 a year. Ultimately responsible are not the judges and police that enforce the law but instead our politicians, who are completely hooked on punitive measures and increasing the prison population, which has risen by 25,000 since 1996. Both Labour and the Tories seem to imagine that despite all the evidence to the contrary, they can build their way out of overcrowding. The Tories even want to cancel the early release scheme, which would swiftly result in the police cells being filled again, at further exorbitant cost to the taxpayer. By the same token, it's been noted repeatedly that when judges believe there to be a punitive mood, either in the public or in politicians, or indeed both, they pass harsher sentences. Often whipped up by the tabloid press, the evidence in fact suggests that such punitive prison policies are dropping in popularity: a recent poll gave an almost equal split between those who thought prison worked and those who wanted alternatives.

On the whole, the courts do a decent job, and mainly get the balance right. It sometimes takes cases like those of Robert Holding and the second Cardiff Three to force reform through, to show that such expense and waste is not the answer. We shouldn't expect however that those so wedded to authoritarian crime polices will have their minds changed, regardless of the evidence of such flagrant injustice.

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12/23/2008 09:31:00 pm | | | links to this post

Wednesday, February 06, 2008 

Just fancy that!

Prime Minister Gordon Brown has backed the limited use of intercept evidence in court, after an independent review.

The Chilcot report says phone tap evidence was needed in some cases in England and Wales for security reasons.

But it says material should not be used against the wishes of the agencies collecting it - or if it could have been gained in another way.

Seeing as MI5, MI6 and GCHQ all pathologically oppose any intercept evidence being made admissible, this is the best possible conclusion that both the review and Brown could have reached. Justice will always come second to "national security considerations."

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2/06/2008 11:59:00 pm | | | links to this post

Tuesday, December 11, 2007 

The footballer, deportation and the dilution of asylum rights.

If there were to be a case that's likely to highlight the inherent unfairness at the centre of this country's asylum system while also one bound to be covered by the tabloids, then you might well have to rely on a footballer facing deportation. That today has happened after Al Bangura, a player with Watford who sought refuge here from Sierra Leone four years ago had his bid to stay rejected.

It would be difficult to come up with a more convincing argument for why someone like Bangura should be allowed to stay. Not only has he most certainly contributed to the community that originally offered him asylum, he's since established a family, with his first child being born only this month, is in paid employment and has helped Watford towards an immediate return to the Premier League after being relegated last season, as the club currently sits at the top of the Championship. Bangura, who was originally trafficked here and sexually assaulted on his arrival, also fears that if returned he could face persecution at the hands of the Soko tribe, formely led by his late father.

Common sense seems to be an alien concept both to the asylum and immigration service in its current form and to the ministers concerned only with inexorably lowering the numbers claiming refuge. While the case of Jahongir Sidikov and deportations to Uzbekistan have become more widely known thanks to Craig Murray's intervention, other disturbing cases, such as that of Maud Lennard, an opponent of Robert Mugabe who sought asylum here only to be racially abused and beaten by guards trying to return her to Malawi, and Meltem Avcil, a 14-year-old girl held for 3 months in Yarl's Wood detention centre where she became suicidally depressed are all too widespread, and many of them receive no coverage whatsoever. The Home Office was so determined to get rid of Meltem and her mother that it apparently attempted to charter a private jet, at no doubt huge cost.

Perhaps the case of Bangura will help to draw attention towards those such as Sidikov that face the prospect of torture if deported to their home countries. The real danger is that as the political climate turns increasingly towards "tough" limits on migration in general that asylum seekers themselves become stigmatised and tarred with the same brush. The latest proposed removal of rights from "failed" asylum seekers, that of access to GP surgeries, does nothing to dissuade from that view. Apart from not affecting their access to accident and emergency departments, it's a fundamental declaration that a class of people, who in most cases have fled genuine oppression, are in effect unpersons and will be treated as such until they decide to leave or are forcibly deported. We earnestly fight against any increase in the detention without charge limit, while such vulnerable people are often forgotten or held for even longer than 42 days. All the signs are that life is about to get even more harsh for those daring to dream of a better life, and never have the aspirations of a few trampled over so many others.

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12/11/2007 11:16:00 pm | | | links to this post

Thursday, November 22, 2007 

Jahongir Sidikov escapes deportation - but for how long?

Craig reports back that Jahongir Sidikov, was mercifully not deported yesterday after offering passive resistance to those charged with putting him on the flight to Uzbekistan. Next time staff authorised and equipped to use force will be used.

Craig also voices his despair at the complete lack of interest, from MPs, officials and journalists about the whole state of affairs. There just doesn't seem to be any knowledge of just how repressive and dictatorial Uzbekistan has become, much worse by almost all accounts than it was during Soviet days. Unfortunately, Uzbekistan lacks marching Buddhist monks and charismatic, popular and well-known opposition leaders, or a ubiquitous tyrant that hate and anger can be directed towards like in Zimbabwe.

There is the spark of a campaign amongst other blogs and those commenting on Craig's site towards raising awareness of Sidikov's plight - Question That listing all those currently linking to Craig's postsfrom the MediaLens contact page and spreading the word. I'm personally unsure of the worth of contacting MPs; they can put down an early day motion and might try raising the issue in the Commons, but that often has little effect. More pressure will be put on the immigration service and Home Office if it gets widespread coverage in the media, which is why I favour personally getting in contact with the broads and ex-broads and making clear that there is real anger and dismay over the government deporting asylum seekers back to countries such as Uzbekistan. They haven't shown much interest so far, but if enough people do contact them they might just sit up and listen. I've taken some of these addresses from the MediaLens contact page:

Guardian
National news desk: national@guardian.co.uk
Alan Rusbridger, editor: alan.rusbridger@guardian.co.uk

Independent
National news desk: newseditor@independent.co.uk
Simon Kelner, editor s.kelner@independent.co.uk

Times
News desk: home.news@thetimes.co.uk

Telegraph
dtnews@telegraph.co.uk

If you do write, try to use your own words as generally they tend to dismiss mailings that are obvious carbon copies.

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11/22/2007 11:59:00 pm | | | links to this post

Wednesday, November 21, 2007 

Home Office to deport failed asylum seeker back to Uzbekistan.

The base inhumanity of the government's policy on asylum seekers seems to have absolutely no depths. Prepared to send "failed" asylum seekers back to Zimbabwe, Sudan, Congo and Iraq, all out of an impossible effort to appease the tabloids which a few years ago decided that those fleeing persecution were actually all skiving chancers looking for something for nothing, the Home Office's latest jaw-dropping attempt at reducing the figures by one is to deport a member of the banned opposition party Erk back to Uzbekistan. That's right, the country which only a couple of weeks ago was exposed on Newsnight as using forced child labour to pick the cotton crop.

Jahongir Sidikov has according to Craig Murray had his plane ticket back to the country booked for this evening. For all I know as I write this he could already be on his way back. Beyond any possible argument, deportation back to such a repressive state as Uzbekistan is almost certainly illegal under international law. As Craig writes, the UN Convention against Torture forbids deportation back to any state where there are "substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture". There is no doubt whatsoever that in Uzbekistan torture is completely endemic in the criminal justice system; Human Rights Watch released a 90-page report (PDF) on November 7 documenting just that. To send Sidikov back to Uzbekistan would be the equivalent of handing him over to the Uzbek authorities, who will doubtless ensure this time that Sidikov remains "disappeared".

The case throws up huge questions about the entire asylum system, from those whom initially decided that he could be safely deported back to Uzbekistan to the judge who rubber stamped the deportation with apparent contempt for the defence's entire arguments. She refused to accept that Craig, who was to be a witness, could not get to the court even though he was in Africa; and that a letter from the opposition leader Mohammed Salih was genuine, even though Murray knows for a fact that it was. The much hyped "fast-tracking" seems to be working perfectly to the government's short-term political advantage: within 2 weeks Sidikov has been refused asylum, had his appeal rejected and is now to be flown back to Uzbekistan. The consequences of this mean that the lawyers for the asylum seekers have very little time to prepare their cases: all very good for the government's spin on reducing the numbers seeking asylum and the "failed" ones being deported; incredibly tragic and unfair for those seeking refuge.

This comes only a week after the Home Office was criticised, according to the BBC's Mark Easton, in the most fierce way he had ever seen by a independent committee, which found that only 8% of complainants to the Border and Immigration Agency were even interviewed, while 89% of subsequent investigations into complaints were "neither balanced nor thorough". No one though really much cares about systematic injustice when it happens to some of the most weak and often wrongly reviled in society. Occasionally, when it involves families like the Kachepas it moves outside the pages of the broadsheets and into the tabloids, but the Independent is around the only newspaper to have consistently highlighted the huge problems and injustices which litter the asylum system. There are, as one of the report's authors said, not a lot of votes in such issues, especially when "human rights" have been turned into such dirty words by the likes of the Scum.

That there might be the most important point. It's the job of the media to push for such potentially unpopular and minority causes, and as the tabloids, which used to lead such campaigns far more than they do now have changed from newspapers into daily celebrity report sheets, awareness itself has collapsed. Where also are the Liberal Democrat or backbench Labour MPs to call for an end to such chilling deportations? It's a truism that a society can be judged by the way it treats the most vulnerable and those that it imprisons, and when it deports those very same people to such flagrant human rights abusers as Uzbekistan, this country deserves to be condemned in the most strident possible terms.

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11/21/2007 08:20:00 pm | | | links to this post

Thursday, November 08, 2007 

de Menezes: Blair as mendacious and deluded as his namesake.


Finally then, a year and ten months it was first formally finished, we receive the IPCC investigation into the death of Jean Charles de Menezes (PDF).

What once would have been explosive and damning reading has been rendered, both by the leaks and the trial of the Met under health and safety legislation, into something almost familiar. It documents failures at all levels, from the officers conducting the surveillance on the morning all the way up to "Sir" Ian Blair himself.

The one thing that overwhelming sticks out from quickly speed-reading the entire document is that of the differing accounts between both the public witnesses of what happened on the tube train and that of the CO12 Special Branch officers and SO19 firearms officers, the first (section 13) who state the police made no mention of who they were when they entered the train, except from the CO12 officers stating "he's here", and the latter (section 18) who all claim that they shouted "police" or "armed police".

Similarly, Cressida Dick and the others inside "Room 1600" all maintain that de Menezes had been identified as Osman on a number of occasions, up to 5 in all. The CO12 officers (section 12) deny ever making a positive identification; indeed, the chronicle of events suggest that one officer decided it definitely wasn't Osman, while the others were uncertain, and thought that the surveillance should continue as a result. Although one managed to come to the conclusion that de Menezes had distinct "Mongolian eyes", there was never a definite positive given to Room 1600. Again, despite none of the surveillance team mentioning that the suspect was "jumpy" or "nervous", Room 1600 came to believe that de Menezes was agitated and "definitely their man." Dick and Detective Superintendent Boutcher requested that the surveillance team give a number on the scale of 1 to 10 on how sure they were that de Menezes was Osman (section 12.22), a request that the receiver, 'James', said was ridiculous, but said that when he had previously seen him over 15 minutes earlier he thought it was a "good possible". This was taken as "they believe it to be Osman."

Despite all the talk after the death of de Menezes of the police's use of "Operation Kratos", the shoot-to-kill policy on those suspected of being suicide bombers, it was never actually put into effect on the morning of the death. The report does go further into the background of Kratos (section 9) and how it came to be police policy, with there being little to no government input. The only real advice the police sought was that of the Treasury Counsel as to the legality of shooting to kill, which came to the conclusion that it was. One of the IPCC recommendations is that there should have been a public debate prior to the implementation of the policy, but that it wasn't thought necessary, or even worthy of discussion in parliament is an indictment of the secretive way of which the police continue to operate.

Even though Kratos was not in actual operation, de Menezes' fate may well have been sealed by the briefing delivered to the firearms officers at Nightingale Lane police station, which dropped everything but the actual shoot-to-kill policy itself into the mix. The individuals involved in the bombings were described as being "deadly and determined" and "up for it" (section 11.11); never was it mentioned that they might encounter those who were entirely innocent in the course of the day. The two officers who shot de Menezes, referred to as "Charlie 2" and "Charlie 12" in the report both said how they believed it was very likely that they would be asked to "intercept deadly and determined terrorist suicide bombers," in the words of Charlie 2 (section 18.21). Charlie 12 was more verbose (section 18.31):

‘We were possibly about to face subjects who had training and had attempted to commit atrocities on innocent human beings with complete disregard to their own lives. They had prepared devices in order to achieve this. There was a real tangible danger that if we didn’t act quickly and correctly there would be an extreme loss of life”.

Both felt as they entered the tube that de Menezes was about to detonate his explosives and they had no choice but to use deadly force, even though it had not been authorised by any officer. The report asked the Crown Prosecution Service to consider whether the actions of of Charlie 2 and 12 amounted to murder, given their justification for shooting de Menezes. (section 20.74). They decided against. Cressida Dick's abject failure to properly either know what was being sent to Room 1600 from the CO12 team, or to make clear to the SO19 team that she wanted de Menezes arrested and not shot, something she failed to make significantly clear, was of no help. One witness from within Room 1600, as had been leaked, claims that Dick added "at all costs." (section 12.36) Whether, if true, it would have made any difference we'll never know.

The report does possibly help clear up some of the initial eyewitness reports given to the media which were so horribly wrong. Many of the witnesses mistook "Ivor", the officer first on the scene and who grabbed hold of de Menezes for an Asian man, and with him also being thrown and a gun pointed at him, he could have easily been mistaken for the man who was shot.

There are a few more minor points in the report that are interesting or indicative of what already was happening on the scene in the aftermath; the pathologist who was on the scene by 13:33 on the 22nd of July was apparently briefed that de Menezes had vaulted the ticket barrier (section 14.16) and ran down the stairs before being shot after tripping, and included those "facts" in his report. It also notes how officers took statements from some of the witnesses inside nearby pubs while music was playing and with the news of what happened on the TV. One of the witnesses described how an officer tried to influence her statement (section 14.8):

“You have to be careful what you say in this sort of situation, or it will be just one more copper with a family losing his job or worse”.

It also shows how officers were allowed to draw up their statements on what happened together and come to a general consensus, whereas the witnesses were denied any opportunity to do just that.

This report really ought to have been the final nail in the coffin of Sir Ian Blair's term as head of the Met. The most damning condemnation is really reserved for him. The IPCC was not allowed any access to Stockwell tube station until the Monday, following Blair's order that the IPCC should be refused access, sent to the Home Office within an hour of the shooting. If we are to believe that Blair didn't know until the following morning that an innocent man was shot, it can't even be said he was trying to instigate a cover-up; he was simply opposed to the IPCC doing the job they was set up to do. Nick Hardwick, in his statement on the issuing of the report, made clear that the delay in the IPCC being able to investigate led directly to much of the "difficulty" that has faced the Met since then. The fact alone that Blair worsened the situation that the police has faced since the tragic death of de Menezes is reason alone for his resignation or sacking. That he presided over a police force that lied through its teeth, smeared de Menezes on a number of occasions and even now seems to deny that the failures were "systemic" makes him almost as mendacious and deluded as his namesake.

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11/08/2007 09:39:00 pm | | | links to this post

Thursday, November 01, 2007 

A guilty verdict, but still no justice.

Before we get away with ourselves celebrating the fact that the Metropolitan police have finally been held to some sort of account over the events of the 22nd of July 2005 (although no individual has been personally blamed), Unspeak throws a spanner into the works. The prosecution case against the Met didn't in fact rest on the small matter that they had endangered the public by shooting dead an innocent man, but rather they had endangered the public by not stopping Jean Charles de Menezes before he had got on any mode of public transport, either a bus or the tube train where he met his violent end. Presumably, if de Menezes had been shot dead shortly after he exited his flat, the police would have not been in the dock at all.

That detail is only one of the minor perversities that have littered the police's response to their execution of de Menezes. The not guilty plea was itself a joke, as the prosecution clearly showed. The detailed, at times forensic examination of what happened that morning exposed a police force in chaos, riddled with general incompetence and showing myriad failings. The Met didn't have any answer to why the SO19 firearms unit, which had been meant to arrive at Scotia Road, where Hussein Osman, one of the failed suicide bombers of the previous day lived at 5:30 in fact didn't turn up until 5 hours later. They couldn't explain why de Menezes was first dismissed as not Osman, then subsequently told that he in fact was, although that is also still confused. The surveillance officers themselves didn't know that the firearms team were present. They couldn't argue against how the firearms team had been told the "suspect was up for it" or that they had been informed they may have to use special "tactics" - shooting the suspect in the head. No one managed to even come up with a reason why he was shot - there was, if the testimony of Cressida Dick and the firearms officers involved is to be believed - no unmitigated authorisation of lethal force.

Instead, the Met fell back on the two things that it has used since shortly after de Menezes was shot: smears and lies. In the aftermath of the Stockwell shooting, the police actively encouraged the stories which some witnesses had given that de Menezes had leapt the barrier, been wearing a bulky jacket and refused to cooperate with officers. One source even stated he had been wearing a belt with wires coming from it. Rather than correct these inaccurate stories, which they knew to be untrue within a matter of hours as the second IPCC report showed, they included them in their own press releases. It took the leaking of the initial IPCC investigation for the truth to slowly start to emerge, that de Menezes had been wearing a light denim jacket, that the officers who shot him were the ones who had leapt the barriers and that he offered no resistance whatsoever; he wasn't given a chance to. In the mean time, the media were briefed that he had overstayed his visa, as if this affected anything whatsoever and later on, that a woman had accused him of rape, something he was cleared of to far less fanfare.

This attitude was exemplified by the behaviour of the defence during the trial. The fact that he had cocaine in his urine was blown out of all proportion, used to try to explain his "aggressiveness, agitation and nervousness" all adjectives used to suggest his in fact normal behaviour was indicative of that of a potential suicide bomber. A prosecution witness accused the defence of manipulating a photograph of de Menezes that was released side by side with one of Hussein Osman to show just how similar they looked, when anyone with a pair of eyes can see that they look nothing like each other. The closing speech by the defence lawyer, Ronald Thwaites QC, has to be one of the most mendacious and deliberately misleading attempts to push the jury towards acquitting of recent times, claiming that de Menezes, who didn't act out of the ordinary or in an "aggressive and threatening" manner was doing something he didn't because he "thought" he had drugs in his pocket, even though he didn't, or because his visa had run out. It's worth quoting some of it in full:

"He was shot because when he was challenged by police he did not comply with them but reacted precisely as they had been briefed a suicide bomber might react at the point of detonating his bomb.

"Furthermore, he looked like the suspect and he had behaved suspiciously. Not only did he not comply, he moved in an aggressive and threatening manner as interpreted by the police and as would be interpreted by you and me in those circumstances, less than 24 hours after an attempt to bomb on the Underground and a bus had taken place.

"This case should never have been brought by any conscientious prosecuting authority worth its salt."


The first paragraph is directly contradicted by the evidence given by "Ivor", the surveillance officer that grabbed de Menezes.

Ivor moved into action as Mr Menezes stood up from his seat on the Northern line train with his arms at waist level and slightly in front of him. He told the jury: "I grabbed Mr Menezes, wrapping both my arms around the torso, pinning his arms against his side, pushing him back to the seat with the right hand side of my head against the right hand side of his torso, pinning him to the seat.

A witness who has spoken to the BBC gave a similar account:

Anna Dunwoodie, who was in the same carriage as Mr Menezes when he was shot, told the BBC how she witnessed this "horrific" moment when armed police ran on board the train.

"It didn't feel to me like I was in the middle of a police operation," she recalled.

"The men who came running in seemed quite chaotic. I'd describe them as slightly hysterical.

"Jean Charles, to my knowledge, did nothing out of the ordinary.

"I didn't notice him until he had a gun pressed to him. It felt to me like he was someone who was being picked on at random because he was nearest to the door.

"We all ran to the sound of gunshots."

Hardly the actions of a man who didn't comply with police requests (some accounts suggest they weren't any) or that was about to detonate explosives. By Thwaites' and Dick's definition, acting suspiciously is getting off a bus to enter a tube station, finding it's closed and getting back on again, then using your mobile phone to send text messages and phone people. If the police shot dead every person who did that on public transport, we wouldn't have to worry about immigration ever again.

Dick herself was just as disingenuous. While being cross-examined she claimed she would act exactly the same again:

"In relation to my own decisions, given what I now know and what I was told at the time, I wouldn't change those decisions."

So instead of just saying that "Nettletip" should be stopped, as she claimed she did, she wouldn't have instead said, unequivocally, that he should be arrested? Dick is either a knave or a fool to say such a thing. The original IPCC report, contents of which were leaked to the News of the World, suggested that she might have added "at all costs" to her order that de Menezes be stopped, something she denied in the witness box.

As a result, we still have no real answer to why de Menezes was shot dead. As Vikram Dodd's account of what took place on the Grauniad website makes clear, and if the evidence given by Dick is to be believed, there was no official authorisation of lethal force. Did the SO19 officers, pumped up by their briefing, take the matter into their own hands once they knew that a potential suicide bomber was already on a train, or was there some other communication that they either misheard or misinterpreted? We simply don't know, because neither of the men who fired shots were called to testify.

We may yet learn more from the inquest, which is likely to be held next year, or from the release of the original IPCC report, held back until the end of the trial, which according to them is to be released within days. Other questions that need answering are how and why the SAS was involved and why bullets that are illegal under the Hague convention were felt suitable for use.

Two things remain the same after all this, however. The Met, despite being fined a substantial amount, a curious decision in itself as it means the taxpayers who were put at risk in the first place are paying for the police's "complete and utter fuck-up", still decides no one is personally accountable. Sir Ian Blair, a man who could have resigned or been sacked multiple times over, and who most certainly should have been fired after the second IPCC report found his secretary knew before him that an innocent man had been shot, is refusing to resign, despite both opposition parties' calling for his removal. Indeed, despite all the evidence to the contrary, he even claimed the mistakes made were not "systematic". He has the support of the government, and of Ken Livingstone, who really should know better but who defends Blair because he fears a more "traditional" copper in the top job. Livingstone's remarks that it will make defending the capital more difficult are also nonsensical: this was the only way to force the Met into changing its procedures which endangered far more people that day than the bombers on the loose did.

Secondly, the de Menezes family still has not seen justice served. The Crown Prosecution Service ought to reconsider its decision not to charge the officers responsible for de Menezes' death with at least manslaughter, considering no order was given for him to be shot, although the inquest may yet find de Menezes was unlawfully killed, triggering another investigation.

The de Menezes family's son was first shot, then smeared, insulted with the promotion of Cressida Dick before any discplinary action, then smeared once again. When police failures involve officers lower down the chain of command, it results in sackings. When the failures involve top level management, no one's responsible. The Met truly has become a corporate machine.

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11/01/2007 08:35:00 pm | | | links to this post

Friday, October 05, 2007 

A tale of two tragedies and different police responses.


Peter Woodhams - Murdered by Bradley Tucker after a seven-month campaign of terror was waged against him by a gang of youths. Despite being previously slashed across the face and stabbed in the neck, the Independent Police Complaint Commission's findings were:

Officers failed to bring in forensic experts
No photographs were taken of the scene
A proper record of the attack was not made in officers' pocketbooks
Officers failed to contact the Woodhams family for more information
Anonymous phone calls identifying several suspects were not followed up by police
Two sergeants did not adequately manage the scene of the attack

As a result, a detective sergeant and a detective constable have been required to resign.

Jean Charles de Menezes - Brutally murdered by a member of the SO19 firearms unit, shot 7 times at point-blank range in the head after being "mistaken" for one of the men who had attempted a suicide bombing on the tube the day before. Despite two highly critical IPCC reports, one of which still yet to be publicly published, and a prosecution against the Metropolitan police on health and safety grounds, which is currently detailing the amazing incompetence and negligence of the Met on July the 22nd, no one has so much as been disciplined over de Menezes's death. In fact, quite the opposite has happened: Cressida Dick, the woman in charge on the day, has already been promoted to deputy assistant commissioner. Despite the second IPCC report into the police's response after de Menezes had been shot, which identified that Assistant Commissioner Andy Hayman had known that it was likely an innocent man had been shot as early as 16:00 the same day, he instead continued to brief the media that the assumption was that it was one of the bombers who was dead. As for Sir Ian Blair, despite seemingly everyone apart from him hearing the rumours that an innocent man had been killed, he didn't learn of the deadly mistake until the following morning. Neither have been disciplined, let alone felt the need to resign.

For Peter Woodhams, justice has come far too late. For Jean Charles de Menezes, it seems unlikely to ever come. It seems that those in the front line are expendable, while the responsible commissioners are untouchable.

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10/05/2007 09:52:00 pm | | | links to this post

Monday, August 13, 2007 

Scum-watch: Calling for the continuation of systematic injustice.

Just how does one become a Sun journalist? Is it nature or nuture? Were they too once idealistic young men and women who dreamed of becoming investigative hacks, exposing the corrupt, the injustices, the lies and scandalous behaviour of the most powerful in our society? Did they imagine that one day they'd be called a cunt by a flame-haired editor because they hadn't got the latest scoop on the relationship drama between a crack-head and sometime model? Do they believe the bile they have to write up, or is it purely out of the love of the pay cheque?

Why am I asking these daft rhetorical questions? Well, here's one more for good measure: just how do some of them sleep at night? Andrew Porter today delivers an abject lesson in how to write an almost typical tabloid scare story:

FIVE men set to be returned to Britain from Guantanamo Bay will cost a staggering £7.5million a year to monitor, security sources revealed last night.

First thing to note is that this comes from a "security" source. Seeing as their job involves lying to everyone around them, regardless of the reason for doing so, anything they say and most especially provide to a Sun hack has to be taken with a pinch of salt. Is it really true that monitoring one man for a year will cost £1.5 million? Are the other former Guantanamo detainees under such surveillance? Almost certainly not - not only have none of them been charged with any crime upon repatriation, some of whom had almost identical or more serious allegations made against them, but apart from Moazzam Begg and the "Tipton Three" they've completely dropped off the radar, apparently no threat to anyone.

Let's not pretend that these men are necessarily completely innocent of some of what might be alleged against them. One of the "Tipton Three" has since confessed that he entered Afghanistan and did spend time at a training camp, where he learned how to use an AK-47, somewhat different to the rosy account in the Road to Guantanamo, where their reasons for visiting Afghanistan were because of the err, huge naans, and little else. Even so, objectionable and criminal as that was, potential ill-treatment and the nightmare of indefinite detention without charge which they faced in Guantanamo was, as Lord Falconer previously called it, a "shocking affront to the principles of democracy."

Keeping this in mind, the Scum goes on to tell us of just what it's alleged two of the five Britons who either had indefinite leave to remain or refugee status in this country were up to:

Shaker Aamer, 38, a Saudi, is accused of being an interpreter for Osama Bin Laden. Jordanian Jamil el-Banna, 44, is alleged to have known Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was in charge of al-Qaeda in Iraq. Those two, along with three others, have been been held in Cuba since 2002.

An interpreter for bin Laden? Really? Aamer is an interesting case: according to Reprieve, he was abducted in Pakistan and sold to US authorities for $5,000, a different account to that given on Wikipedia, which contends that he was captured in Afghanistan, working for a charity which is now banned by the United Nations as a front for al-Qaida. After 5 years of keeping stum on exactly what he's meant to have done, he's now become a interpreter and translator for bin Laden, which you would have thought they just might have mentioned before now. Aamer, apparently a master terrorist, is meant to have lived with Zacarias Moussaoui, the supposed 20th 9/11 hijacker in London in the late 90s, and also have met with Richard Reid, the idiot shoe bomber. Not only that, but he's also alleged to be trained in the use of surface to air missiles and explosives.

One has to wonder if these allegations have anything to do with Aamer's reputation, both with the guards and fellow detainees at Guantanamo. Speaking English, articulate and charismatic, he became a natural leader: he negotiated an end to one of the first mass hunger strikes, in return for the guards setting up a grievance committee and agreeing to abide by the Geneva conventions. The military authorities quickly disbanded the committee, and Aamer was subsequently put in solitary confinement, of which he has now been in for 2 years. Reprieve claims that this has had a "substantial" effect on his mental health. If released, Aamer most certainly has a story to tell, and with his acknowledged communication skills he could quite easily follow in the same footsteps as Moazzam Begg.

The new allegation against al-Banna is that as well as having links with Abu Qutada, who he knew through Bisher al-Rawi, since released after it was revealed that he had helped MI5 keep tabs on him, (al-Banna was also offered the opportunity to help MI5 but declined) he also had a "long-term association" with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. While al-Banna and Zarqawi shared Jordanian nationality, it's unclear just how long-term this association could have been. al-Zarqawi turned up in Afghanistan right at the end of the jihad against the Soviets, meeting the filmmaker Richard Stanley amongst others. Between 1989 and 1992, when Zarqawi was imprisoned in Jordan, he is reported to have traveled to Europe. This doesn't give much time for al-Banna to have a "long-term association" with him, as he came to Britain in 1994. Was the association prior to Zarqawi's jihadi days? Was it a "long-term association" conducted over the telephone? Or is it, as the lawyer for both men Clive Stafford Smith says, "a blatant attempt to smear [his] clients"?

The argument about Guantanamo has never been about what the men imprisoned there are accused of doing, although when we know now that vast numbers of them have been completely innocent of any actionable offence that does begin to enter into it, but about the moving of prisoners outside of any legal authority, the failure to allow any organisation other than the Red Cross to visit the detainees, and the indecent, beneath contempt treatment with which they have dealt with since the camp was first opened. Amnesty International called it the gulag of our times, which was heavily criticised by some, but while the detainees are not worked to death, most of those in the gulag at least knew how long they were meant to be there; to jail someone indefinitely is one thing, but to do it without a trial is to remove all hope entirely.

The Sun, despite having a "justice" sub-page mostly dedicated to fighting the scourge of nonces, has no such qualms about silly concerns like the right to a fair trial and habeas corpus. Its leader is titled, erroneously, "Kick 'em out":

GORDON Brown’s efforts to bring back five UK residents from Guantanamo Bay are ever more bewildering.

Tony Blair made no effort to help them and with good reason.


Yeah, because he was a hypocritical bastard who let his ministers call in effect for its closure while doing nothing to help those still there who we have a responsibility towards.

The Pentagon claims they are “extremely dangerous individuals”.

After two years in solitary confinement? After being force-fed? After losing all hope that they would ever be released, caught in limbo between two countries that have disowned them? Even if there were once dangerous, something itself very much open to question, to pretend they are now is a joke.

The Pentagon warns they are a real risk to Britain. Yet Foreign Secretary David Miliband has unaccountably bent over backwards to secure their release.

Unaccountably bent over backwards as in told the United States that they'd like it if they were returned. Considering the Americans had been making noises about wanting to close the place down, you'd expect that they'd be more than happy for them to be taken off their hands. The Guardian had also previously reported that the US had offered to repatriate them but that the Blair government had refused to accept them. Instead they've realised after making them spend 4 years or more in good old fashioned American hospitality that they might just have some uncomfortable things to say, like Bisher al-Rawi and the others before him have. Releasing prisoners to the Middle East or elsewhere is one thing, where they're unlikely to have the media chasing them: doing it in Britain is another.

To add insult to injury, taxpayers will have to shell out £7.5million a year to monitor them.

These men aren’t even British. They merely have residency status.


And you know what else? They're not even white!

So revoke it. If the Pentagon’s right, they’re the last people to give a home to.

It might be slightly glib to remind everyone, but this was the same Pentagon which told everyone that there was weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, something the Sun was also more than happy to believe. It lied about two prominent soldiers dying not "heroic" deaths, but in friendly fire incidents. It couldn't run a piss-up in a brewery, but it sure can destroy a country if you give it a few months and a budget of hundreds of billions. The Scum really couldn't be doing much more to earn its nickname.

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8/13/2007 06:54:00 pm | | | links to this post

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