Obsolete

In the first challenge to a control order in which the court heard full evidence, Mr Justice Beatson quashed the order on a Tunisian, E.

The home secretary issued a new order with less restrictive terms, pending an appeal, but he claimed this would increase E's likelihood of absconding.

"To protect the public, I have today made a new control order. Inevitably this is weaker than the original one, which means it is more difficult for the police to supervise him."

E was mentioned as a co-conspirator in a terrorism trial in Belgium. The case relied heavily on intercept evidence, which is only inadmissible in UK courts if the interception happens here.

Mr Justice Beatson said the home secretary's decision to maintain the control order on E was tainted by his failure to keep the issue of prosecution under review. The judge also quashed the control order on the grounds that the cumulative effect of the restrictions, particularly the requirement to have all visitors and anyone E met outside the home vetted, deprived him of his liberty, in breach of the European human rights convention.

Labels: control orders, intercept evidence, John Reid, MI5

Twice-married Mr Johnson will spell out how he rose to the top from humble beginnings.

He came from a broken home where his dad walked out and his mum died when he was 12.

He was brought up by his elder sister and started shelf-stacking when he quit his school in Chelsea.

He quit when he was offered a promotion at the supermarket without a pay rise. He became a postman at 18 and joined the Communication Workers Union, rising to the top to become general secretary.

During his post career he delivered to Dorneywood — the grace-and-favour mansion where deputy leader John Prescott was snapped playing croquet.

Today he will say his life is an example of the Britain he wants to see — with no barriers to success.

The contrast with shameless Peter Hain could not be more stark. He is anti-American and pro-union, ingredients sure to destroy Britain.

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Labels: Alan Johnson, celebrity culture, hypocrisy, Jon Cruddas, Labour deputy leadership contest, Peter Hain, Scum-watch, Sun-watch

Labels: south London shootings, Unicef report

Some reports suggest Khayam was drawn to radical Islam during his three-year jail spell, which ended with his release on licence last year. His brother, who describes Khayam as a 'moderate Muslim', denies the charge.

'He said that when there's a 23-hour lock-up, you have to make the most of the one hour you have free. He tried the gym at first, then he paid more frequent visits to the mosque.' His father interjected. 'From a religious point of view, he stayed the same. Prison had no influence on him.'

After being released last year Khayam started a bricklaying course and helped out with the family computer business in Bedford. Then came the Danish embassy protest and the suicide-bomber outfit.

Labels: Omar Khayam, Scum-watch, Sun-watch, the Investigator

Labels: Bisher al-Rawi, Eliza Manningham-Buller, EU rendition report, extraordinary rendition, Geoff Hoon, Gerald Batten

"This is one of the most important cases which the house has had to decide in recent years.

"It calls into question the very existence of an ancient liberty of which this country has until now been very proud: freedom from arbitrary arrest and detention."

"This is a nation which has been tested in adversity, which has survived physical destruction and catastrophic loss of life. I do not underestimate the ability of fanatical groups to kill or destroy, but they do not threaten the life of the nation."

"Whether we should survive Hitler hung in the balance, but there is no doubt we shall survive al-Qaida. The Spanish people have not said that what happened in Madrid, hideous crime as it was, threatened the life of the nation. Their legendary pride would not allow it.

"Terrorist crime, serious as it is, does not threaten our institutions of government or our existence as a civil community."

The Sun however is only interested in putting up a straw man argument: that the Human Rights Act protects the freedoms of "terrorists", while ignoring that it protects the freedom of everyone. The disproportionate response of this government in turning to legislation to "tackle" terror has undermined civil liberties and abused human rights, but when it's against those who are "enemies" this doesn't matter one iota to the Sun. It's a slippery slope, but the Sun would never admit to it being one. Just tell Tony he's right.

The Scum article continues:

Last year, judge Mr Justice Sullivan said control orders — a replacement for detention without trial — were illegal.

Indeed he did, but John Reid then appealed. Reid subsequently lost the appeal, and those under the control orders had the restrictions placed on them slightly loosened. Control orders are still in effect, even though at least 2 men have subsequently managed to go missing despite being under them, which brought into sharp focus the reality of both how discriminatory and useless they are. The government's continuing refusal to make intercept evidence admissible in British courts, at the behest of the ever secretive spooks, means that we're depriving those under control orders both of the right to hear the evidence against them, and to defend themselves from the very evidence that the authorities claim to have. It's Kafkaesque, and it's little wonder that some have decided to actually return to their home country rather than continue to put up with a breach of liberty in a nation that once prided itself on it. The government has had more than enough of an opportunity to come up with a solution that doesn't breach the Human Rights Act, in line with other European countries, but it has refused to do so.

A month later, the same judge ruled that nine Afghan plane hijackers had a “human right” to stay in Britain.

No he didn't. He ruled that the refusal to give the men leave to remain, a decision made by an immigration panel who decided their lives would be at risk if they were deported back to Afghanistan, was an "abuse of power". The men had brought the case in the first place because they were being treated as failed asylum seekers, and so could not work, which is what they wanted to be allowed to do. In return for wanting to contribute to British society, they were treated to this libelous and deeply distorted Scum front page:



Charles Falconer has since accepted that the way John Reid and Tony Blair reacted to the ruling only encouraged the tabloids to act outraged:

Yet in the cold light of day the lord chancellor, Lord Falconer, had accepted "unequivocally" that it was right that human rights law should prevent the hijackers from being sent back to Afghanistan if there was a risk they faced death or torture.

But Lord Falconer, who last week called for “common sense” over human rights, yesterday even had a dig at judges. He said: “Policy must come first and the law second. We need to get away from where human rights are viewed as a ‘terrorists’ charter’.

Had a dig at judges? The Sun would never do that! I wonder who is chiefly responsible for making the Human Rights Act become viewed as a "terrorists' charter"?

“Our freedoms are embodied in that convention. We shouldn’t be ashamed by it. We shouldn’t be embarrassed by it. It doesn’t prevent us fighting terrorism.”

It's about time this was made clear, but it's been this government that's only been too willing to join in with the Sun and others in undermining the Human Rights Act. It they had fought back from the beginning, either legislated better or not at all, then none of this would have ever occurred.

Then we have this idiocy from the Tories' constitutional affairs shadow:

The Tories have pledged to replace the 1998 Act with a Bill of Rights.

Shadow constitutional affairs secretary Oliver Heald said: “Lord Falconer is talking about the Human Rights Act he should have passed, not the flawed Human Rights Act we have.”

Seeing as the Human Rights Act was simply introducing the European Convention into UK law, with a number of omissions, then Heald ought to take his problem with the HRA up with those who drew it up in 1950. The Human Rights Act was mainly brought in so that those seeking judgment under the ECHR no longer had to go to Strasbourg to do so. The Tories idea for a Bill of Rights would presumably contain much the same rights that the HRA does, and even Ken Clarke described it as "xenophobic nonsense". It's a non-starter of a plan, but it's enough to get some kudos from the tabloids.

The Sun's leader gets off to a great start with an insult:

IF you were caught red-handed for mass murder, smooth-talking Charlie Falconer would try to get you off with an Asbo.

Geddit?!? He's an idiot brief?!

Which is pretty much what the Lord Chancellor tried to do yesterday when he insisted human rights laws are no bar to the war on terror.

He ignored the fact that police today are paralysed by fear of legal action if they make an arrest.

Obviously. That's why the police in Birmingham didn't make any arrests... err, wait a minute. The police in fact have very little to worry about, as this week's IPCC report into the Forest Gate raid made clear. The police who arrested Abu Bakr and another men and held them for a week while only questioning them for at the most at four hours and about nothing to do with terrorism haven't had to as much as explain their actions to the men.

Or that law lords banned round-the-clock surveillance on dangerous suspects because it infringed their liberty.

Which we've already discussed, was the right decision and was the British equivalent of Guantanamo Bay, even if the men weren't abused as those at Gitmo have alleged they have been.

Tony Blair once vowed to tear up human rights laws if they hampered the fight against terror.

He did so after unveiling tough laws which, he claimed, would have been rejected on human rights grounds before London’s 7/7 catastrophe.

And it was Charlie Falconer who claimed at the time that those 52 innocent civilians might never have died . . .

Had Mr Blair’s anti-terror laws already been in place.

I don't recall Falconer doing so, and if he did then he should have resigned for making such a specious statement. The Scum is also ignoring its own role in making sure that Blair's doomed 90 days legislation was heavily defeated, its hysterical attempts to get support for the law which involved using the image of one of those injured on 7/7 who vehemently opposed Blair's measures, then turning on those who dared to vote against by calling them "traitors". As then, the Sun and Rebekah Wade are the true traitors; conniving in the dilution of civil liberties, supporting the very measures which remove our rights in order to fight those who have no respect for them.

Labels: Charles Falconer, human rights act, Scum-watch, Sun-watch

This post was execrable. I apologise for that.

Spotted in the local paper:


Have yourselves a happy, prolapsed gaping anus day.

Labels: goatse, Valentine's Day

Labels: bloggocks, BNP, Guido, hypocrisy

In one of those more happy, not conspiratorial coincidences, the release of the second IPCC report in the police raid on the home of the Koyair brothers and their neighbours (PDF) has nicely complimented the guilty plea of Robert Cottage, a former BNP member, who has pleaded guilty to the possession of explosives.

When police raided his house on 28 September 2006 they discovered 21 types of chemicals which, when combined, could form explosives.

Miss Blackwell said they also uncovered a document called the Anarchy Cookbook, which detailed how to make different types of bombs.

Ball bearings - which the prosecution claim could be used as shrapnel for explosive devices - were also found, along with four air pistols.

After interviewing Mr Cottage, detectives raided Mr Jackson's home on 1 October and found a bow and arrow and two nuclear protection suits.

Up until now, the mass media has been almost silent on this discovery, which at the time was referred to by the local media, around the only part of the fourth estate apart from blogs that reported on the raid, as the biggest ever seizure of bomb-making materials from one home in the country.

Before we get into denouncing the double standards of media, knowing full well if it had been Muslims who had been found with such material instead of two white men that it may well have led the news agenda for a couple of days, Rachel makes a number of good points based on her own digging into the story. It simply seems that it passed the media by - if they had known about from the beginning, they would have made something of it. As it happened, the police also initially played down the raids, so it seems only the local media took any interest, and didn't pass it on to their colleagues in the national press.

The one thing that grates though is the fact that the police seem to have accepted that Cottage was not planning a terrorist attack, and only charged them under the ancient (1883) Explosive Substances Act. Cottage's claim that he believed civil war was coming, a belief similar to those held by extreme-right survivalist militias in the United States, and that he was keeping explosives ready for it, shouldn't be allowed to wash. You can't imagine Islamist extremists getting away with such an excuse in court, nor would the tabloids allow them to.

At least in the case of Cottage and his friend David Jackson, justice seems likely to be done. When it comes to the Koyair brothers, their family and their neighbours, they will go on waiting. While today's second IPCC report is not a whitewash, and is far more critical of the police operation in Forest Gate than Scotland Yard are admitting, as Martin Kettle points out, it still leaves a good few questions. The main one surrounds the intelligence that triggered the raid in the first place. The report says (image because the report doesn't allow text copying for some reason):


As the intelligence has only been provided on a confidential basis, unless it happens to be leaked, it seems we're destined to never know for sure just exactly what the police were expecting to find other than a "highly dangerous explosive device" or a "remote-controlled chemical bomb". The media reports at the time were similarly unsure of what it was the police were looking for. The Daily Mail and Times suggested it was a suicide vest that would also have sprayed out poison, the Sunday Express screamed "ANTHRAX TERROR BOMB HUNT", while the News of the Screws, in the same story that wrongly claimed that one of the brothers had shot the other, reported that it was an "explosive device designed to spray out deadly cyanide".

If the police had been willing to be truly open, they would have released the intelligence in full, with any details which could have identified the source censored. Instead we have to take the IPCC's word for it that the intelligence was both believable and so troubling that it necessitated a raid that was brutal in its execution. It's also worth considering this initial Grauniad report that suggested there had been two months of surveillance before the raid -- how in two months did they not realise that this was an ordinary family with nothing to hide who have since been treated abysmally?

There are also contradictions between the evidence given by the officer identified as hitting Hanif, one of the residents of the adjacent house to the one owned by the Koyair family, and his own account of what happened. Hanif contends that he was hit with the butt of the officer's gun as soon as the police entered the room where he had been sleeping -- the officer maintains that Hanif was failing to comply with directions, and he was afraid he was reaching for something under his bed. The officer in any case falls back on the excuse that he was operating in the face of "extreme threat", even though this was a raid carried out in the early hours of the morning, where all the occupants of both houses had been asleep until the police entered, and that he was operating in the property that was raided only because it was believed that both were connected. While the house was owned by the Koyair family, there was no way to gain access to one from inside the other.

The report does mention the leaking and coverage of the raid, but as commenting on such things is outside its remit, doesn't draw any conclusions. It would have been nice for the IPCC to investigate where the leaking came from, but that seems to have been too much to expect. Instead, we have to draw our conclusions, and judging by the way the Murdoch press in particular set out to "get" the Koyair brothers, suggesting that one of them had a criminal record when he did not, that they had a suspiciously large amount money in cash, even though the family had explained they had it because of their religious belief in not using bank accounts which accrue interest, and then finally, and most damagingly, that one of the brother's computers and phones' had child pornography on. When the CPS failed to prosecute and it emerged there were a lot of questions over just how the pornography appeared on the devices, the Sun still persisted, with an officer telling it that "the images were there and a jury should have decided how they get there".

No one disputes that if there is a clear case of public safety being threatened, then such disruptive and potentially personally destructive raids have to take place regardless of such concerns. However, as the report sets out, the police made little to no allowances for the intelligence being incorrect, and the officers acted throughout almost as if they were above the law. The way in which the media were leaked such defamatory and completely inaccurate information shows the contempt in which the men were treated. They were guilty until proved innocent, and it seems that the police were so determined to find something to use against them that they may have even turned to planting child pornography, something which cannot be proved, but in the circumstances of the operation cannot be easily dismissed as being laughable or conspiratorial.

One can only hope that the recommendations of the report are taken on board. That the events of the last couple of weeks seem to have repeated history, only this time with the Home Office coming under suspicion for the leaking, and with a number of the men accused of terrorism being charged, certainly doesn't inspire confidence in either the police or government to restrain themselves when dealing with such sensitive operations.

Labels: BNP, David Jackson, Forest Gate terror raid, IPCC, Koyair brothers, Robert Cottage

Labels: David Cameron, drugs

Labels: Craig Sweeney, paedophilia, Scum-watch, Sun-watch, Wakefield prison

Labels: Bloggerheads, bloggocks, Caroline Hunt, Guido, Iain Dale, Tim Ireland