Michael Meacher MP

Should whistle-blowers be protected, together with the organisation that seeks to give publicity to their revelations – Wikileaks?   The upcoming trial of Bradley Manning, a US Army intelligence analyst, is a case in point.   He is charged with leaking a highly classified video of US soldiers in an Apache helicopter killing unarmed civilians in Baghdad.   The air crew is heard falsely claiming they came across a firefight, laughing over the dead, and then attacking a van trying to rescue the wounded.   Wikileaks published the video under the title Collateral Murder.   The US military establishment was hugely embarrassed.   Should Manning and Wikileaks be punished? (more…)

The Cameron/Clegg inquiry into whether MI5 and MI6 officers, whilst not themselves committing torture on those caught up in the post-9/11 wars, nevertheless were complicit with countries abroad in the use of  torture on their behalf, is certainly welcome but rather more murky than at first sight both as to its causation and its likely outcomes.   It is right that the inquiry is judge-led rather than being headed up by a senior politician who would be less credible and less forensic.   But disquieting aspects about both the origins and intended objectives of this initiative include the following hidden reefs ignored in the Commons exchanges. (more…)

This phoney atmosphere of happy-clappy coalition is rapidly coming to an end.    The real problem is not contrasting political philosophies – a relatively soft matter – it’s rather as Macmillan so pointedly put it:  ‘Events dear boy, events’.   And one has already struck hard, even before we get to impasse over massive public spending cuts on 22 June.

Teresa May was left tongue-tied this morning on Radio 4 Today trying to explain why two suspected terrorists, Abid Naseer and Ahmed Faraz Khan, were not being deported back to Pakistan.   It is alleged they were planning a bomb attack in Manchester a year ago, and the judge ruled that they posed a serious threat to national security; yet they couldn’t be deported under Human Rights Act rules because they were likely to face torture or execution in their home country.    This immediately raises three issues that sharply divide the Tories and the LibDems. (more…)

The security services have once again triumphed – over Parliament, the legal system, principles of justice, and protection of the public. The report last week confirming that the Government would persist with the prohibition of the use of telephone intercepts in court will allow some criminals to walk free, some innocent defendants to be convicted, and the UK legal system to be denied a right to get at the truth by a convention that exists nowhere else in the world. This is madness. Putting a bug in a mobile phone can produce evidence that can be allowed in an English court, but if the evidence was obtained through an intercept that took place remotely, it can’t be used. This may well mean that evidence which alone could secure convictions for murder, drug dealing or sex offences, or which might give decisive support to the defence case preventing an unjust conviction, cannot be made available. How can such an absurd anomaly persist?

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When several UK citizens alleged that they had been tortured in Pakistan on suspicion of terrorism and that MI5 officials were aware of this, indeed encouraged it, the Government stonewalled by saying that it did not condone torture. This did not of course answer the question of whether they had indeed been complicit in the brutal treatment of certain named individuals. The allegations are extremely serious. Salahuddin Amin from Luton said that in between interviews by MI5 he was beaten, whipped, deprived of sleep, and threatened with an electric drill. Rengzieb Ahmed from Rochdale said he was beaten and whipped and had three fingernails ripped out. The lawyers of Rashid Rauf from Birmingham say they saw physical evidence of his torture. Zeeshan Siddiqui was beaten, drugged and forcibly catheterised, and became so traumatised he couldn’t stand trial and was had to be transferred to hospital. A doctor from the English south coast was tortured for 2 months before being questioned by MI5. What is significant now is that these claims, which have long been known, have been corroborated by officers within the notorious Pakistani ISI who did the torturing and confirm that it was undertaken with the full knowledge of British intelligence. So how can those responsible – not American jailers at Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo, but British officials outsourcing torture to countries known to practise it – be brought to book?

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At today’s delegation which I took together with David Davies and Chris Huhne to see Alan Johnson about the McKinnon extradition issue, the Home Secretary for the first time revealed his thinking about his refusal, in the statements he’s made so far, to stop the extradition going ahead. I made clear he had the power to intervene, and he confirmed – contrary to some reports – that it would not be illegal for him to block the extradition. But he made clear that in his view, after a string of court decisions at all levels over the last 7 years, it would be very difficult for him to do so since the measure of discretion for his intervention was, he said, extremely narrow. Under Article 3 of the Human Rights Convention he insisted he could only do so if there was evidence that the defendant could be subject to capital punishment, or that he might be transferred to a third country, or that he might be tried on a different charge from that being alleged. Obviously the latter two do not apply in this case, but I pointed out that on the first point he was under a duty to intervene if there was a real risk, not only of execution, but of torture or inhuman and degrading treatment, and the Home Office lawyers agreed. There is indeed a real risk that Gary McKinnon could be subject to inhuman or degrading treatment when initially the Americans threatened him with a lengthy sentence in harsh conditions if he fought extradition, as opposed to a much shorter sentence in more pleasant conditions is he co-operated with them.
It was also quite clear that Alan Johnson was concerned about the precedent that would be set in regard to other current cases, notably that of the alleged terrorist Abu Hamza, if he were to intervene in the McKinnon case. We pointed out that this showed how poorly drafted the Extradition Act 2003 had been when not only was it gave rights to the us that were denied to the UK, but it bizarrely applied the same rules to a misguided but innocuous young man as to a serious alleged terrorist. A more common-sense and proportional approach was needed. The Act also omitted, what the Dutch and other governments had insisted on in their case, that any citizen extradited to the US and found guilty should then be immediately repatriated to serve the sentence in his or her own country.

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Two top human rights lawyers from Matrix Chambers have provided an unambiguous legal opinion (commissioned by the Daily Mail) declaring that the Home Secretary not only has the power, but also the duty, to intervene in any extradition case even after the court process has ended if there is a real risk of a human rights breach should extradition proceed. This is contrary to the advice being given to Alan Johnson by the Legal Department within the Home Office that there was nothing he could do to prevent the extradition once the Hiigh Court had ruled that it could go ahead. However, the Extradition Act 2003 gives the English courts the primary responsibility – but significantly not the exclusive responsibility – for ensuring that the safeguards built into the Act which protect the defendant’s health and human rights are fully maintained. This indicates unequivocally that the Home Secretary as well as the courts have an essential role to play in extradition issues.

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