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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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Tuesday, May 29, 2007 

Injustice multiplied part two.

The injustice of having money deducted from the payments to victims of miscarriages of justice continues:

A 37-year-old man jailed for a crime he did not commit is being charged almost £7,000 for his time in prison.

Warren Blackwell from Woodford Halse, Northamptonshire, has been told the sum will be deducted from compensation to cover savings on rent and food.

He spent three years in jail convicted of sexually assaulting a woman with a history of false claims against men.

The same thing previously befell the Hickeys, who spent close to two decades in prison for the murder of Carl Bridgewater, a crime they did not commit. That decision was upheld, astoundingly, by four law lords in a majority decision which means that without the government legislating, and with no apparent case to take to the ECHR, that such despicable penny-pinching from those who have had years of their lives taken away from them is likely to continue.

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Monday, April 16, 2007 

Baha Mousa: the injustice continues.

For the family of Baha Mousa, the man beaten to death by British troops in Iraq, the injustice continues unabated. His father was today meant to attend a press conference at the House of Commons, to present 46 previously unseen photographs further detailing the 93 separate injuries that were inflicted on him.

Instead, he was absent. According to Mousa's lawyer, Phil Shiner, he had suffered "visa issues", having been unable to obtain one from the British embassy in Damascus.

One can only speculate as to why.

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Thursday, March 15, 2007 

Injustice multiplied.

Imagine, if you will, that you've been wrongly convicted of murder. That your conviction itself was the result of the police fabricating evidence and beating you and the others convicted alongside yourself. That during your 18 years in prison, you were regarded as amongst the lowest of the low as a result of the fact that you were convicted of killing a child, enduring assault and having your food tampered with on numerous occasions, including being tainted with glass and urine.

After those 18 years you're finally free, and cleared of any involvement in the now unsolved murder. In the compensation paid out to you however, the Home Office deducts what it regards as a suitable amount for your board and lodging. Somehow, the fact that even outside prison you still have to pay for the time you wrongly spent inside, eating tampered with food, every day wondering whether you'd ever escape from what one judge would eventually describe as a "prolonged kidnapping" adds insult on to over a decade of injury.

This is what the Hickeys, two of those convicted of murdering the newspaper boy Carl Bridgewater, have now had to face up to. Appealing to the highest court in the land against this obvious and disgraceful injustice, they lost by a majority decision of 4-1. The judges, trying to justify the unjustifiable, suggested the deductions should be seen as "expenses" they would have had to pay if they had in fact been able to work. That's all right then.

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Thursday, January 11, 2007 

Another grim milestone.

Today marks the fifth anniversary of the opening of Guantanamo Bay, where 9 British residents still languish, apparently now more or less abandoned by the government, with little to no hope of being set free any time soon.

The Guardian today reports that David Hicks, who the courts ordered be granted citizenship, had it stripped from him again within hours by John Reid, as he apparently err, poses a threat to national security, even though he's currently imprisoned in a prison camp described by numerous New Labour ministers as an "affront to justice" that should be closed down.

The only one of the 9 who might just be allowed back, Bisher al-Rawi, who was rewarded for keeping watch on Abu Qutada (himself now in prison awaiting deportation to Jordan, if it ever happens) by being rendered with the connivance of MI5 from Gambia, is according to his lawyer slipping into madness.

I'm not usually one for casually slipping into conspiracy theories, but the whole circus surrounding al-Rawi and Qutada utterly stinks. Qutada, as well as being accused of being one of Osama bin Laden's right hand men, and the spiritual leader of al-Qaida in Europe, was according to a 2004 Times article an MI5 double agent, who pledged to help MI5 stop attacks in return for them leaving him alone. A similar offer may well have been made to Abu Hamza. Qutada instead seemed to be setting up his own terrorist network. Apparently having al-Rawi also spying on Qutada, he became useless once Qutada himself was arrested in October 2002, having been on the run since the previous December. Upon leaving Britain to go to Gambia, al-Rawi and his friend Jamil El Banna were questioned by security officers about a battery charger that al-Rawi had modified. Concluding it was harmless, they let them go, only for MI5 to alert the CIA that al-Rawi was in fact carrying bomb parts. They swooped once they arrived in Gambia, and al-Rawi and Banna were rendered to Guantanamo.

I previously wondered whether al-Rawi might be the only one allowed back, in return for keeping quiet about his spying on Qutada. What seems apparent now is that Britain is only prepared to have al-Rawi back in no fit state to talk about anything.

Some can reasonably argue that Britain has no legal obligation to have those still held at Guantanamo returned. This might be true had Britain entirely washed its hands off them, yet it clearly hasn't. That ministers and others have time and again now condemned the prison camp, yet aren't willing to take back those who we have a responsibility to is also the height of double standards. The main problem is that now having spent years in a prison camp where conditions are according to Clive Stafford Smith the harshest he has experienced in twenty years of representing those on death row, there's little chance of trying them for any of the crimes they've been accused of. The injustice of holding men without charge, beyond the Geneva Conventions, at least up until the passing of the new laws earlier in the year by the Bush administration, means that there will now be little chance of justice for anyone. Hence the Catch-22 situation continues, for now and maybe evermore.

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