Police are hunting a saboteur who has killed off floral displays in a North Yorkshire village taking part in this year's Britain in Bloom competition.
A mixture of law, politics, autobiography and humour. Once described as "The Devilish Advocate" (Guardian), I do have the ability to provoke a response. Sometimes it comes from someone who uses a thought process, and sometimes from jerks usually associated with the knee.
Monday, May 31, 2010
Photo of gay coupled released from Malawi prison
Photo of gay coupled released from Malawi prison
Gay couple keep low profile after release from prison in Malawi
A gay couple from Malawi have kept out of the public eye after being pardoned and freed from prison, in what a relative said was a deliberate decision prompted by the conservative view of homosexuality in the southern African country.
A naked dwarf for some reason using a Henry vacuum cleaner as a penis extension.
Gay couple keep low profile after release from prison in Malawi
A gay couple from Malawi have kept out of the public eye after being pardoned and freed from prison, in what a relative said was a deliberate decision prompted by the conservative view of homosexuality in the southern African country.
A naked dwarf for some reason using a Henry vacuum cleaner as a penis extension.
Europe v UK 1-3 June 2010
Europe v UK 1-3 June 2010
European Court of Human Rights´ judgments: 2nd Council of Europe Committee of Ministers meeting to supervise execution
Strasbourg, 28.05.2010 – From 1st to 3rd June the Council of Europe Committee of Ministers will hold its second 2010 “human rights” meeting, in which it will supervise the execution of judgments of the European Court of Human Rights.
471 new cases will be examined, a number of which raise questions related to the adoption of individual measures needed to erase the consequences for the applicants of violations established by the European Court (over and above the payment of any monetary damages awarded by the Court itself) and/or general measures, such as legislative changes, aimed at preventing new similar violations.
The Committee will also examine progress made in a number of pending cases, including the advancement of some 500 legislative or other reforms required as a result of the European Court’s judgments. The Committee will consider as well the adoption of final resolutions in 87 cases in which all of the necessary execution measures have been taken by the national authorities, and will assess whether some 11 further cases are ready to be closed.
A preliminary list of items/cases for consideration at this meeting is available on the website www.coe.int/execution, under the heading "CM-DH meetings".
The latest public information on the main pending cases is available, on a country-by-country basis, under the heading "State of execution".
Interim Resolutions and decisions, in particular taking stock of progress achieved and providing guidance as to possible further execution measures required, will become public at the end of the meeting. Other decisions, and the annotated agenda (with information on the execution situation made in the different cases), will be made public once formally adopted a fortnight after the meeting at the Committee of Ministers website and at www.coe.int/execution.
European Court of Human Rights´ judgments: 2nd Council of Europe Committee of Ministers meeting to supervise execution
Strasbourg, 28.05.2010 – From 1st to 3rd June the Council of Europe Committee of Ministers will hold its second 2010 “human rights” meeting, in which it will supervise the execution of judgments of the European Court of Human Rights.
471 new cases will be examined, a number of which raise questions related to the adoption of individual measures needed to erase the consequences for the applicants of violations established by the European Court (over and above the payment of any monetary damages awarded by the Court itself) and/or general measures, such as legislative changes, aimed at preventing new similar violations.
The Committee will also examine progress made in a number of pending cases, including the advancement of some 500 legislative or other reforms required as a result of the European Court’s judgments. The Committee will consider as well the adoption of final resolutions in 87 cases in which all of the necessary execution measures have been taken by the national authorities, and will assess whether some 11 further cases are ready to be closed.
A preliminary list of items/cases for consideration at this meeting is available on the website www.coe.int/execution, under the heading "CM-DH meetings".
The latest public information on the main pending cases is available, on a country-by-country basis, under the heading "State of execution".
Interim Resolutions and decisions, in particular taking stock of progress achieved and providing guidance as to possible further execution measures required, will become public at the end of the meeting. Other decisions, and the annotated agenda (with information on the execution situation made in the different cases), will be made public once formally adopted a fortnight after the meeting at the Committee of Ministers website and at www.coe.int/execution.
Reform of European Court of Human Rights: Protocol No.14 enters into force
Reform of European Court of Human Rights: Protocol No.14 enters into force
Strasbourg, 31.05.2010 – Protocol No. 14 to the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, which aims to make the European Court of Human Rights more efficient, enters into force tomorrow.
In a joint statement, Thorbjørn Jagland, Secretary General of the Council of Europe, and Jean-Paul Costa, President of the European Court of Human Rights, said "the entry into force of Protocol No. 14 represents a crucial step in improving the effectiveness of the Court and the protection of human rights in Europe. The Convention establishes the foundations of a common legal space across Europe. Protocol 14 will permit the Court to concentrate more on cases that raise important human rights issues, so it can play its role most effectively."
“Protocol No. 14 provides the legal basis for the possibility of EU accession to the Convention, to which the EU is commited under the Lisbon Treaty. EU accession will further strengthen the protection of human rights in Europe by submitting the EU’s legal system to independent external control with regard to the rights protected by the Convention, as interpreted by the Court in its case law”, they added.
Protocol No. 14 reforms the Court´s procedures by:
- Reinforcing its filtering capacity to deal with clearly inadmissible applications
- Establishing a new admissibility criterion concerning cases in which the applicant has not suffered a significant disadvantage
- Introducing measures for dealing more efficiently with applications related to issues for which a well-established case law exists, sometimes known as repetitive cases.
Another objective of the reform is to strengthen the role of the Council of Europe Committee of Ministers when supervising the execution of the judgments.
The entry into force takes place on 1 June 2010, three months after its ratification by Russia, the last state to ratify it.
Note to editors:
In 2009, 57,200 applications were allocated to a judicial formation of the Court. The backlog reached 119,300 applications. In 2010, 23,800 have so far been allocated to a judicial formation. The backlog has reached 125.900 pending cases.
The Court’s excessive workload is due to two factors in particular: the processing of a great number of applications that are declared inadmissible (more than 90% on which a decision is made), and repetitive cases (around 60% of the judgments every year).
Despite the improvements brought by Protocol No. 14, further reform of the Convention system is necessary. In a high level conference on the future of the Court held in Interlaken (Switzerland) in February 2010, the 47 Council of Europe member states adopted a Declaration and Action Plan proposing work on additional short and medium-term reform measures.
Strasbourg, 31.05.2010 – Protocol No. 14 to the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, which aims to make the European Court of Human Rights more efficient, enters into force tomorrow.
In a joint statement, Thorbjørn Jagland, Secretary General of the Council of Europe, and Jean-Paul Costa, President of the European Court of Human Rights, said "the entry into force of Protocol No. 14 represents a crucial step in improving the effectiveness of the Court and the protection of human rights in Europe. The Convention establishes the foundations of a common legal space across Europe. Protocol 14 will permit the Court to concentrate more on cases that raise important human rights issues, so it can play its role most effectively."
“Protocol No. 14 provides the legal basis for the possibility of EU accession to the Convention, to which the EU is commited under the Lisbon Treaty. EU accession will further strengthen the protection of human rights in Europe by submitting the EU’s legal system to independent external control with regard to the rights protected by the Convention, as interpreted by the Court in its case law”, they added.
Protocol No. 14 reforms the Court´s procedures by:
- Reinforcing its filtering capacity to deal with clearly inadmissible applications
- Establishing a new admissibility criterion concerning cases in which the applicant has not suffered a significant disadvantage
- Introducing measures for dealing more efficiently with applications related to issues for which a well-established case law exists, sometimes known as repetitive cases.
Another objective of the reform is to strengthen the role of the Council of Europe Committee of Ministers when supervising the execution of the judgments.
The entry into force takes place on 1 June 2010, three months after its ratification by Russia, the last state to ratify it.
Note to editors:
In 2009, 57,200 applications were allocated to a judicial formation of the Court. The backlog reached 119,300 applications. In 2010, 23,800 have so far been allocated to a judicial formation. The backlog has reached 125.900 pending cases.
The Court’s excessive workload is due to two factors in particular: the processing of a great number of applications that are declared inadmissible (more than 90% on which a decision is made), and repetitive cases (around 60% of the judgments every year).
Despite the improvements brought by Protocol No. 14, further reform of the Convention system is necessary. In a high level conference on the future of the Court held in Interlaken (Switzerland) in February 2010, the 47 Council of Europe member states adopted a Declaration and Action Plan proposing work on additional short and medium-term reform measures.
And another thing Tom Harris MP...
And another thing Tom Harris MP...
I like the headline "Government surrenders on prisoners’ votes", because the case is called Hirst v UK(No2) and I am only to happy to accept the white flag. However I am not sure that your headline is actually factually correct, even if that should be the case legally, morally and politically.
I suspect that Jamie Doward's quote unquote was down to his misquoting the MoJ with what somebody else had said. Certainly, the quote was very quickly taken down from the online version without any explanation given. It would have been nice if the Guardian/Observer had clarified the issue.
Whilst it may have started out as Hirst v UK(No2), because Labour in government kicked it into the long grass, it became Europe v UK. And I, for one, am glad that I am European and no longer English or British because I like being on the winning side. The showdown, by the way, is tomorrow 1 June 2010 in Strasbourg.
Therefore Iain Dale, LBC, and Tom Harris MP, totally missed the point by asking the wrong question "whether prisoners should have the vote?". The ECtHR has already answered that question on 30 March 2004, and re-affirmed it on 6 October 2005. And, in case the UK still did not get the message, re-emphasised the Hirst test in Frodl v Austria on 8 April 2010. All that Labour achieved was to burden the taxpayers with a bill of up to £75,000,000 (£75m) for compensation to convicted prisoners denied their human right to the franchise on 6 May 2010. Congratulations!
The problem with kicking the ball into the long grass is that the UK lost sight of the ball. Meanwhile, Europe firmly had its eyes on the ball. For example, Reform of European Court of Human Rights: Protocol No.14 enters into force. The good old Lisbon Treaty comes to the prisoners' rescue.
On behalf of the Association of Prisoners (AoP), part of the international Prisoners Rights Movement, I would be only to happy to now accept the white flag being waved by the UK. Let there be no misunderstanding, any surrender must be unconditional. It only confuses issues when the vanquished starts demanding terms.
Where do we go from here? Well, the Committee of Ministers on 1 June 2010 will decide what sanctions to apply against the UK. I and my supporters have asked that the CoM invokes Rule 11 infringement proceedings, if this happens then my case is referred back to the Court for it to judge whether the UK has failed to comply with the Hirst v UK(No2) judgment. I would say it is an open and shut case. If the Court agrees, then the case is referred back to the CoM to either suspend or expell the UK from both the Council of Europe and European Union.
Have a nice day!
I like the headline "Government surrenders on prisoners’ votes", because the case is called Hirst v UK(No2) and I am only to happy to accept the white flag. However I am not sure that your headline is actually factually correct, even if that should be the case legally, morally and politically.
I suspect that Jamie Doward's quote unquote was down to his misquoting the MoJ with what somebody else had said. Certainly, the quote was very quickly taken down from the online version without any explanation given. It would have been nice if the Guardian/Observer had clarified the issue.
Whilst it may have started out as Hirst v UK(No2), because Labour in government kicked it into the long grass, it became Europe v UK. And I, for one, am glad that I am European and no longer English or British because I like being on the winning side. The showdown, by the way, is tomorrow 1 June 2010 in Strasbourg.
Therefore Iain Dale, LBC, and Tom Harris MP, totally missed the point by asking the wrong question "whether prisoners should have the vote?". The ECtHR has already answered that question on 30 March 2004, and re-affirmed it on 6 October 2005. And, in case the UK still did not get the message, re-emphasised the Hirst test in Frodl v Austria on 8 April 2010. All that Labour achieved was to burden the taxpayers with a bill of up to £75,000,000 (£75m) for compensation to convicted prisoners denied their human right to the franchise on 6 May 2010. Congratulations!
The problem with kicking the ball into the long grass is that the UK lost sight of the ball. Meanwhile, Europe firmly had its eyes on the ball. For example, Reform of European Court of Human Rights: Protocol No.14 enters into force. The good old Lisbon Treaty comes to the prisoners' rescue.
On behalf of the Association of Prisoners (AoP), part of the international Prisoners Rights Movement, I would be only to happy to now accept the white flag being waved by the UK. Let there be no misunderstanding, any surrender must be unconditional. It only confuses issues when the vanquished starts demanding terms.
Where do we go from here? Well, the Committee of Ministers on 1 June 2010 will decide what sanctions to apply against the UK. I and my supporters have asked that the CoM invokes Rule 11 infringement proceedings, if this happens then my case is referred back to the Court for it to judge whether the UK has failed to comply with the Hirst v UK(No2) judgment. I would say it is an open and shut case. If the Court agrees, then the case is referred back to the CoM to either suspend or expell the UK from both the Council of Europe and European Union.
Have a nice day!
Kenya: Prisoners Push for Right to Vote in Constitution Referendum
Kenya: Prisoners Push for Right to Vote in Constitution Referendum
Reported by allAfrica.com on Monday, 31 May 2010
A move by inmates at Mombasa's Shimo la Tewa Prison to petition a court to allow them to vote in the August 4 referendum on the draft constitution could set a precedent for future participation of convicts in national decision making.
A move by inmates at Mombasa's Shimo la Tewa Prison to petition a court to allow them to vote in the August 4 referendum on the draft constitution could set a precedent for future participation of convicts in national decision making.
Section 43 (c ) of the current constitution disqualifies convicts from voting in a presidential, parliamentary and civic elections but the convicts have told the Interim Independent Constitutional Dispute Resolution Court that the section of the law does not bar prisoners from participating in a referendum.
If the case goes the way of the convicts - it could extend voting rights to Kenya's 108,000 inmates held in the country's 87 prisons.
And if the convicts win the case, the IIEC would be forced to seek more funds from Treasury to enable them re-open the voter register to enlist the prisoners and issue them with voters' cards besides arranging appropriate voting venues for them at the referendum day.
Curtailed rights
A notice in the current Kenya Gazette indicates that the convicts of Shimo la Tewa have asked the Interim Independent Constitutional Dispute Resolution Court - a creation of the constitution of Kenya Review Act of 2008 to determine whether prisoner's right to participate in a referendum is curtailed by section 43 (c) of the constitution which explicitly states that people detained in lawful custody cannot vote in general elections.
Through Ms Priscilla Nyokabi Kanyua, the director of Kituo Cha Sheria - a paralegal organisation based in Nairobi, the convicts have demanded that the voter registration exercise be reopened specifically to allow them to register as voters and participate in the referendum.
The referendum is intended at presenting the draft constitution.
Voting in August 4 would be Kenya's second referendum since independence.
The first referendum in 2005 ended in the disapproval of the then draft constitution.
"Was IIEC right to exclude prisoners from its voter registration exercise given the mandate under section 41 (d) of the constitution of Kenya to undertake fresh registration of voters and create new voters register for the upcoming referendum without expressly prescribed limitation to exclude any category of people" says Ms Nyokabi in a petition she filed on behalf of the Shimo La Tewa prisoners.
This is the first dispute facing the Interim Independent Constitutional Dispute Resolution Court, which was sworn in by President Kibaki in January.
Other judges
Justices Michel Bastarache of Canada, Ms Unity Dow of Botswana and Alistair Cameron of the United Kingdom form the Bench.
Other judges include Justice Samuel N. Mukunya, Justice Ms. Violet Khadi Mavisi, Justice Ms. Scholastica Omondi, Justice Ms. Jamila Mohamed, Justice Sankale Ole Kantai and Justice Mburugu M'Nkanata Kioga.
Reported by allAfrica.com on Monday, 31 May 2010
A move by inmates at Mombasa's Shimo la Tewa Prison to petition a court to allow them to vote in the August 4 referendum on the draft constitution could set a precedent for future participation of convicts in national decision making.
A move by inmates at Mombasa's Shimo la Tewa Prison to petition a court to allow them to vote in the August 4 referendum on the draft constitution could set a precedent for future participation of convicts in national decision making.
Section 43 (c ) of the current constitution disqualifies convicts from voting in a presidential, parliamentary and civic elections but the convicts have told the Interim Independent Constitutional Dispute Resolution Court that the section of the law does not bar prisoners from participating in a referendum.
If the case goes the way of the convicts - it could extend voting rights to Kenya's 108,000 inmates held in the country's 87 prisons.
And if the convicts win the case, the IIEC would be forced to seek more funds from Treasury to enable them re-open the voter register to enlist the prisoners and issue them with voters' cards besides arranging appropriate voting venues for them at the referendum day.
Curtailed rights
A notice in the current Kenya Gazette indicates that the convicts of Shimo la Tewa have asked the Interim Independent Constitutional Dispute Resolution Court - a creation of the constitution of Kenya Review Act of 2008 to determine whether prisoner's right to participate in a referendum is curtailed by section 43 (c) of the constitution which explicitly states that people detained in lawful custody cannot vote in general elections.
Through Ms Priscilla Nyokabi Kanyua, the director of Kituo Cha Sheria - a paralegal organisation based in Nairobi, the convicts have demanded that the voter registration exercise be reopened specifically to allow them to register as voters and participate in the referendum.
The referendum is intended at presenting the draft constitution.
Voting in August 4 would be Kenya's second referendum since independence.
The first referendum in 2005 ended in the disapproval of the then draft constitution.
"Was IIEC right to exclude prisoners from its voter registration exercise given the mandate under section 41 (d) of the constitution of Kenya to undertake fresh registration of voters and create new voters register for the upcoming referendum without expressly prescribed limitation to exclude any category of people" says Ms Nyokabi in a petition she filed on behalf of the Shimo La Tewa prisoners.
This is the first dispute facing the Interim Independent Constitutional Dispute Resolution Court, which was sworn in by President Kibaki in January.
Other judges
Justices Michel Bastarache of Canada, Ms Unity Dow of Botswana and Alistair Cameron of the United Kingdom form the Bench.
Other judges include Justice Samuel N. Mukunya, Justice Ms. Violet Khadi Mavisi, Justice Ms. Scholastica Omondi, Justice Ms. Jamila Mohamed, Justice Sankale Ole Kantai and Justice Mburugu M'Nkanata Kioga.
Government surrenders on prisoners’ votes
Government surrenders on prisoners’ votes
Sunday, May 30th, 2010
IAIN Dale called me this afternoon to invite me to contribute to a discussion on his LBC Radio show. The subject was whether prisoners should have the vote. Iain knew my views on this were robust. I agreed to appear.
I confess I didn’t know what had prompted the inclusion of the topic in the programme until I got back home and read the Observer’s report about general unhappiness and impatience that the UK government still hasn’t obeyed orders from the European Court of Human Rights that some prisoners should be allowed to vote.
What is particularly interesting about the report is this quote in the Observer’s online edition from a spokeswoman for the Ministry of Justice:
The government is considering the best way forward on the issue of prisoner voting rights. Until the approach is settled, it would not be appropriate to make further comments.
But in the actual print edition, the spokeswoman does indeed make further comment. In fact she is reported to have added:
Disenfranchisement is an outdated, disproportionate punishment which has no place in a modern prison system with a renewed emphasis on rehabilitation and resettlement.
Pardon me? A spokeswoman for the government said that? So it’s already been decided by ministers – including, I assume, our new Home Secretary – that not allowing prisoners the vote is “outdated, disproportionate” and “has no place in a modern prison system”? When was that decided? When did parliament have the opportunity to come to a decision?
The faultline in all of this, of course, is the LibDems; they generally support giving prisoners the vote and Tories, despite their many faults, don’t. The logic seems to be that allowing criminals to vote while they’re incarcerated will be an incentive to reform themselves, to connect with society and help them feel they have a stake in it. Once allowed the right to have a say in who forms the government at either local or national level, then all that resentment at missing their families and friends, at losing their very freedom, their right to associate with whoever they want, the resentment at having to share a cell with a large, scary-looking bloke with a scar and disrespect for your personal space… all of this will be more than outweighed by the prospect of placing that cross on the ballot paper.
You’ll have gathered by now that I’m unconvinced. I would be interested in seeing some research into how many of our current prison population have actually voted before and who desperately miss the opportunity. It’s hard enough persuading ordinary citizens to cast their vote without worrying about those who chosen a course of action which they know will deprive them of that particular right. If increasing numbers of citizens are placing less value on their vote – for whatever reason – what makes campaigners think that giving it to prisoners will make the slightest bit of difference to their eventual rehabilitation?
Sunday, May 30th, 2010
IAIN Dale called me this afternoon to invite me to contribute to a discussion on his LBC Radio show. The subject was whether prisoners should have the vote. Iain knew my views on this were robust. I agreed to appear.
I confess I didn’t know what had prompted the inclusion of the topic in the programme until I got back home and read the Observer’s report about general unhappiness and impatience that the UK government still hasn’t obeyed orders from the European Court of Human Rights that some prisoners should be allowed to vote.
What is particularly interesting about the report is this quote in the Observer’s online edition from a spokeswoman for the Ministry of Justice:
The government is considering the best way forward on the issue of prisoner voting rights. Until the approach is settled, it would not be appropriate to make further comments.
But in the actual print edition, the spokeswoman does indeed make further comment. In fact she is reported to have added:
Disenfranchisement is an outdated, disproportionate punishment which has no place in a modern prison system with a renewed emphasis on rehabilitation and resettlement.
Pardon me? A spokeswoman for the government said that? So it’s already been decided by ministers – including, I assume, our new Home Secretary – that not allowing prisoners the vote is “outdated, disproportionate” and “has no place in a modern prison system”? When was that decided? When did parliament have the opportunity to come to a decision?
The faultline in all of this, of course, is the LibDems; they generally support giving prisoners the vote and Tories, despite their many faults, don’t. The logic seems to be that allowing criminals to vote while they’re incarcerated will be an incentive to reform themselves, to connect with society and help them feel they have a stake in it. Once allowed the right to have a say in who forms the government at either local or national level, then all that resentment at missing their families and friends, at losing their very freedom, their right to associate with whoever they want, the resentment at having to share a cell with a large, scary-looking bloke with a scar and disrespect for your personal space… all of this will be more than outweighed by the prospect of placing that cross on the ballot paper.
You’ll have gathered by now that I’m unconvinced. I would be interested in seeing some research into how many of our current prison population have actually voted before and who desperately miss the opportunity. It’s hard enough persuading ordinary citizens to cast their vote without worrying about those who chosen a course of action which they know will deprive them of that particular right. If increasing numbers of citizens are placing less value on their vote – for whatever reason – what makes campaigners think that giving it to prisoners will make the slightest bit of difference to their eventual rehabilitation?
Sunday, May 30, 2010
For those who want to live in glasshouses and throw stones
For those who want to live in glasshouses and throw stones
Prisoner voting back on the human rights agenda this week
Prisoner voting back on the human rights agenda this week
The Guardian reports today that prisoner voting rights will be back in the public eye this week with critical comments from Europe and increased pressure from compensation claims.
Interestingly, the article has now been amended to remove part of a quote from the Ministry of Justice, who had initially said that “Disenfranchisement is an outdated, disproportionate punishment which has no place in a modern prison system with a renewed emphasis on rehabilitation and resettlement”. This line has been replaced by a policy-neutral quote. On the face of it, it seems that government may finally act on this issue, five years after the European Court of Human Rights criticism of its ban in the case of Hirst v UK.
In the 2005 decision of Hirst, the European Court held that Section 4 of the Representation of the People Act 2000(sic, it is actually s.3 of RPA 1983), which prevents prisoners from voting, is in breach of the electoral right under Article 1 of Protocol 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
The Council of Europe, which monitors compliance with European Court of Human Rights decisions, will this week issue another rebuke against the UK government’s continuing refusal to act. The Guardian reports that
"The committee of ministers… is to meet this week to discuss the UK’s failure to enfranchise prisoners following the ruling.The committee will then issue a stark public reminder to the government that it must comply with the ruling immediately. If it refuses, the committee has the power to refer the question of whether the government has failed in its obligations to the ECHR, a move that would put Westminster on a collision course with the Strasbourg-based Council of Europe".
The Council is probably hoping that the new government will show more willingness to act than the last one did. As the article states, “The Lib Dems were strongly critical of the previous government’s refusal to enfranchise the prison population while the Conservatives have consistently avoided addressing the issue.”
Compensation claims on the horizon
In the build up to the General Election we posted on the potential consequences of preventing prisoners from voting. The UK government is not bound to comply with judgments of the European Court (just as, technically at least, it need not comply with judgments of a UK court), but this leaves it open to compensation claims from spurned voters.
Lord Pannick suggested shortly before the election that prisoners may be entitled to around £750 compensation if denied the vote. This figure then became commonly touted as the amount of compensation people may receive having been denied due to administrative incompetence during the election. Solicitor firms are already launching claims, and in theory tens of thousands may follow.
The Council have pointed out that the UK is now “out of step with many other countries. Eighteen European countries have no restrictions on prisoners voting while in France and Germany a decision to disenfranchise a prisoner is left to the courts. In Australia and New Zealand the length of a prisoner’s sentence determines their right to vote. Other countries where prisoners have the right to vote include South Africa, Poland, and Canada.”
The continued pressure from Europe may finally make a difference to government policy, and the threat of compensation claims will focus minds. However, a change to the law may not be popular with the public, and the Coalition Government may choose to save its energy for more pressing concerns, such as the economy.
The Guardian reports today that prisoner voting rights will be back in the public eye this week with critical comments from Europe and increased pressure from compensation claims.
Interestingly, the article has now been amended to remove part of a quote from the Ministry of Justice, who had initially said that “Disenfranchisement is an outdated, disproportionate punishment which has no place in a modern prison system with a renewed emphasis on rehabilitation and resettlement”. This line has been replaced by a policy-neutral quote. On the face of it, it seems that government may finally act on this issue, five years after the European Court of Human Rights criticism of its ban in the case of Hirst v UK.
In the 2005 decision of Hirst, the European Court held that Section 4 of the Representation of the People Act 2000(sic, it is actually s.3 of RPA 1983), which prevents prisoners from voting, is in breach of the electoral right under Article 1 of Protocol 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
The Council of Europe, which monitors compliance with European Court of Human Rights decisions, will this week issue another rebuke against the UK government’s continuing refusal to act. The Guardian reports that
"The committee of ministers… is to meet this week to discuss the UK’s failure to enfranchise prisoners following the ruling.The committee will then issue a stark public reminder to the government that it must comply with the ruling immediately. If it refuses, the committee has the power to refer the question of whether the government has failed in its obligations to the ECHR, a move that would put Westminster on a collision course with the Strasbourg-based Council of Europe".
The Council is probably hoping that the new government will show more willingness to act than the last one did. As the article states, “The Lib Dems were strongly critical of the previous government’s refusal to enfranchise the prison population while the Conservatives have consistently avoided addressing the issue.”
Compensation claims on the horizon
In the build up to the General Election we posted on the potential consequences of preventing prisoners from voting. The UK government is not bound to comply with judgments of the European Court (just as, technically at least, it need not comply with judgments of a UK court), but this leaves it open to compensation claims from spurned voters.
Lord Pannick suggested shortly before the election that prisoners may be entitled to around £750 compensation if denied the vote. This figure then became commonly touted as the amount of compensation people may receive having been denied due to administrative incompetence during the election. Solicitor firms are already launching claims, and in theory tens of thousands may follow.
The Council have pointed out that the UK is now “out of step with many other countries. Eighteen European countries have no restrictions on prisoners voting while in France and Germany a decision to disenfranchise a prisoner is left to the courts. In Australia and New Zealand the length of a prisoner’s sentence determines their right to vote. Other countries where prisoners have the right to vote include South Africa, Poland, and Canada.”
The continued pressure from Europe may finally make a difference to government policy, and the threat of compensation claims will focus minds. However, a change to the law may not be popular with the public, and the Coalition Government may choose to save its energy for more pressing concerns, such as the economy.
Britain must give prisoners the vote
Britain must give prisoners the vote
Europe pressures Westminster on votes for prisoners
The UK government may be taken to the European court of human rights if it continues to deny prisoners the vote
The Conservatives have avoided the issue of prison inmates' right to vote. Photograph: Geoff Moore / Rex Features
The government faces being hauled before the European court of human rights unless it gives prisoners the right to vote as a matter of urgency.
The revelation comes as several law firms seek to launch claims on behalf of thousands of UK prisoners who are demanding compensation – estimated to be as much as £750 each – on the grounds they were illegally denied the right to vote at the last general election.
The contentious issue threatens to become another test of the Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition. The Lib Dems were strongly critical of the previous government's refusal to enfranchise the prison population while the Conservatives have consistently avoided addressing the issue.
In March 2004, the ECHR ruled in Hirst v UK that the government's blanket ban barring sentenced prisoners from voting was unlawful. But despite the ruling, the previous government continued to consult on the issue and failed to make it law.
The committee of ministers, the body that oversees European member states' compliance with ECHR judgments, is to meet this week to discuss the UK's failure to enfranchise prisoners following the ruling.
The committee will then issue a stark public reminder to the government that it must comply with the ruling immediately. If it refuses, the committee has the power to refer the question of whether the government has failed in its obligations to the ECHR, a move that would put Westminster on a collision course with the Strasbourg-based Council of Europe.
The clash would represent the culmination of months of mounting frustration on the part of the committee. In March it warned the UK must "rapidly adopt measures, of even an interim nature, to ensure the execution of the court's judgment before the forthcoming general election", otherwise the nationwide vote would be illegal.
The Prison Reform Trust, which campaigns for prisoners to be given the vote, said the government now has no choice but to introduce measures that will enfranchise inmates. "We understand from their statements that the committee of ministers at the Council of Europe takes this matter of protracted non-compliance very seriously indeed and we hope that the new coalition government will seek to put matters right without further delay," said Juliet Lyon, director of the trust.
Penal reformers say giving prisoners the vote is about restoring a fundamental human right that will confer a sense of responsibility and aid their rehabilitation.
They point out that the UK is out of step with many other countries. Eighteen European countries have no restrictions on prisoners voting while in France and Germany a decision to disenfranchise a prisoner is left to the courts.
In Australia and New Zealand the length of a prisoner's sentence determines their right to vote. Other countries where prisoners have the right to vote include South Africa, Poland, and Canada.
But any move that recognises the ECHR ruling on prisoner voting is likely to spark an angry reaction from Eurosceptics. In the House of Lords last year Lord Tebbit attacked the measure as a form of "judicial imperialism" effectively foisted on the UK by a foreign court.
Enfranchising prisoners is supported by the Prison Governors Association and Lord Hurd, the former Conservative home secretary, has claimed that "if prisoners had the vote then the MPs would take a good deal more interest in conditions in prisons".However, the previous government, aware that some sections of the media and the public are opposed to allowing prisoners the vote, claimed there were problems with implementing the legislation. The concerns have been assuaged by the Electoral Commission which has established a mechanism by which prisoners can be enfranchised though a system of postal or proxy voting.
The government also said it was unclear which categories of prisoner should be allowed to vote. In April in the case of Frodl v Austria, the ECHR ruled that it is unlawful to disenfranchise all prisoners serving a sentence of more than one year in jail.
The court emphasised that a decision to deny a prisoner the vote should instead "be taken by a judge, taking into account the particular circumstances".
A spokeswoman for the Ministry of Justice said: "The government is considering the best way forward on the issue of prisoner voting rights. Until the approach is settled, it would not be appropriate to make further comments. Disenfranchisement is an outdated, disproportionate punishment which has no place in a modern prison system with a renewed emphasis on rehabilitation and resettlement."
Europe pressures Westminster on votes for prisoners
The UK government may be taken to the European court of human rights if it continues to deny prisoners the vote
The Conservatives have avoided the issue of prison inmates' right to vote. Photograph: Geoff Moore / Rex FeaturesThe government faces being hauled before the European court of human rights unless it gives prisoners the right to vote as a matter of urgency.
The revelation comes as several law firms seek to launch claims on behalf of thousands of UK prisoners who are demanding compensation – estimated to be as much as £750 each – on the grounds they were illegally denied the right to vote at the last general election.
The contentious issue threatens to become another test of the Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition. The Lib Dems were strongly critical of the previous government's refusal to enfranchise the prison population while the Conservatives have consistently avoided addressing the issue.
In March 2004, the ECHR ruled in Hirst v UK that the government's blanket ban barring sentenced prisoners from voting was unlawful. But despite the ruling, the previous government continued to consult on the issue and failed to make it law.
The committee of ministers, the body that oversees European member states' compliance with ECHR judgments, is to meet this week to discuss the UK's failure to enfranchise prisoners following the ruling.
The committee will then issue a stark public reminder to the government that it must comply with the ruling immediately. If it refuses, the committee has the power to refer the question of whether the government has failed in its obligations to the ECHR, a move that would put Westminster on a collision course with the Strasbourg-based Council of Europe.
The clash would represent the culmination of months of mounting frustration on the part of the committee. In March it warned the UK must "rapidly adopt measures, of even an interim nature, to ensure the execution of the court's judgment before the forthcoming general election", otherwise the nationwide vote would be illegal.
The Prison Reform Trust, which campaigns for prisoners to be given the vote, said the government now has no choice but to introduce measures that will enfranchise inmates. "We understand from their statements that the committee of ministers at the Council of Europe takes this matter of protracted non-compliance very seriously indeed and we hope that the new coalition government will seek to put matters right without further delay," said Juliet Lyon, director of the trust.
Penal reformers say giving prisoners the vote is about restoring a fundamental human right that will confer a sense of responsibility and aid their rehabilitation.
They point out that the UK is out of step with many other countries. Eighteen European countries have no restrictions on prisoners voting while in France and Germany a decision to disenfranchise a prisoner is left to the courts.
In Australia and New Zealand the length of a prisoner's sentence determines their right to vote. Other countries where prisoners have the right to vote include South Africa, Poland, and Canada.
But any move that recognises the ECHR ruling on prisoner voting is likely to spark an angry reaction from Eurosceptics. In the House of Lords last year Lord Tebbit attacked the measure as a form of "judicial imperialism" effectively foisted on the UK by a foreign court.
Enfranchising prisoners is supported by the Prison Governors Association and Lord Hurd, the former Conservative home secretary, has claimed that "if prisoners had the vote then the MPs would take a good deal more interest in conditions in prisons".However, the previous government, aware that some sections of the media and the public are opposed to allowing prisoners the vote, claimed there were problems with implementing the legislation. The concerns have been assuaged by the Electoral Commission which has established a mechanism by which prisoners can be enfranchised though a system of postal or proxy voting.
The government also said it was unclear which categories of prisoner should be allowed to vote. In April in the case of Frodl v Austria, the ECHR ruled that it is unlawful to disenfranchise all prisoners serving a sentence of more than one year in jail.
The court emphasised that a decision to deny a prisoner the vote should instead "be taken by a judge, taking into account the particular circumstances".
A spokeswoman for the Ministry of Justice said: "The government is considering the best way forward on the issue of prisoner voting rights. Until the approach is settled, it would not be appropriate to make further comments. Disenfranchisement is an outdated, disproportionate punishment which has no place in a modern prison system with a renewed emphasis on rehabilitation and resettlement."
When John Simpson met Mandela
When John Simpson met Mandela
On the eve of the World Cup in South Africa, The BBC's World Affairs Editor recalls the day he came face to face with the father of that nation for the first time – and why he is like no one else on earth
It's getting dark, and I'm hopelessly lost. There are few street signs in Soweto and scarcely any maps. I'm starting to feel scared – not so much because there's a lot of crime here, but because I'm now seriously late. If I manage to offend the man I've come to see, perhaps he'll show a different side of himself – an unpleasant, overbearing side. Then all the admiration I've had for him will evaporate, and he'll be just like all the other public figures you've previously admired: smaller, meaner, vainer than you'd hoped.
On the eve of the World Cup in South Africa, The BBC's World Affairs Editor recalls the day he came face to face with the father of that nation for the first time – and why he is like no one else on earth
It's getting dark, and I'm hopelessly lost. There are few street signs in Soweto and scarcely any maps. I'm starting to feel scared – not so much because there's a lot of crime here, but because I'm now seriously late. If I manage to offend the man I've come to see, perhaps he'll show a different side of himself – an unpleasant, overbearing side. Then all the admiration I've had for him will evaporate, and he'll be just like all the other public figures you've previously admired: smaller, meaner, vainer than you'd hoped.
Muslim preacher of hate is let into Britain
Muslim preacher of hate is let into Britain
THE home secretary, Theresa May, is facing a stiff test of the Conservative party’s claims to oppose radical Islam after her officials chose to allow a misogynist Muslim preacher into Britain.
Zakir Naik, an Indian televangelist described as a “hate-monger” by moderate Muslims and one Tory MP, says western women make themselves “more susceptible to rape” by wearing revealing clothing.
How does one become a Muslim preacher of hate? Quite simply all it requires is for him to be "condemned by David Davies, the Tory MP for Monmouth, who described him as a “hate-monger”". Right. This is the same piece of shit who recently said it would be a bonus if innocent suspected terrorists were deported from this country and subjected to torture abroad. Doesn't that make David Davies a preacher of hate?
THE home secretary, Theresa May, is facing a stiff test of the Conservative party’s claims to oppose radical Islam after her officials chose to allow a misogynist Muslim preacher into Britain.
Zakir Naik, an Indian televangelist described as a “hate-monger” by moderate Muslims and one Tory MP, says western women make themselves “more susceptible to rape” by wearing revealing clothing.
How does one become a Muslim preacher of hate? Quite simply all it requires is for him to be "condemned by David Davies, the Tory MP for Monmouth, who described him as a “hate-monger”". Right. This is the same piece of shit who recently said it would be a bonus if innocent suspected terrorists were deported from this country and subjected to torture abroad. Doesn't that make David Davies a preacher of hate?
Dennis Hopper: Born to be wild
Dennis Hopper: Born to be wild
'Easy Rider' established Dennis Hopper as the poster boy of Sixties hedonism, yet his life off the screen was just as colourful.
"Dennis Hopper, the American actor who was the epitome of a Hollywood hellraiser and starred most memorably in the cult classic Easy Rider, died at home in California yesterday, aged 74. He had been suffering from prostate cancer.
Even from his deathbed, the hard-living star made headlines as he sued for divorce from his fifth wife Victoria Duffy in a split that was as rancorous as it was typically tumultuous".
'Easy Rider' established Dennis Hopper as the poster boy of Sixties hedonism, yet his life off the screen was just as colourful.
"Dennis Hopper, the American actor who was the epitome of a Hollywood hellraiser and starred most memorably in the cult classic Easy Rider, died at home in California yesterday, aged 74. He had been suffering from prostate cancer.
Even from his deathbed, the hard-living star made headlines as he sued for divorce from his fifth wife Victoria Duffy in a split that was as rancorous as it was typically tumultuous".
Saturday, May 29, 2010
A cross too burdensome to bear?
A cross too burdensome to bear?
Ian Parker Joseph asked: Would you like to have a go at interpreting this ruling? http://bit.ly/ceba4U
I like a challenge, even though I have no interest in religion and it is not really my area of law.
“The European Court of Human Rights shouldn’t overstep its authority and force a member nation to abandon traditions and beliefs that it has a sovereign right to protect if it so chooses,” said European-based ADF Legal Counsel Roger Kiska.
“An outside judicial body demanding that a nation must forsake and discontinue how it handles millennia-old traditions is a step towards an authoritarian system that no country anywhere on the globe should welcome,” contends Kiska. “The MEPs are encouraged that they will be able to submit their views to the court and defend the rights of all sovereign European member states over such matters.”
I detect a flaw in the logic of this argument.
However, I can also see flawed reasoning in the Court’s decision.
In 2009 the ECHR unanimously agreed with Lautsi’s argument saying that the “presence of the crucifix – which it was impossible not to notice in the classrooms – could easily be interpreted by pupils of all ages as a religious sign and they would feel that they were being educated in a school environment bearing the stamp of a given religion.” The court found: “The compulsory display of a symbol of a given confession in premises used by the public authorities, and especially in classrooms, thus restricted the right of parents to educate their children in conformity with their convictions, and the right of children to believe or not to believe.”
The European Convention is clear; the decision of the Court is final. Member States of the Council of Europe and EU have agreed this position; therefore it is difficult to see how the Court can overstep its authority. The Court has absolute jurisdiction. The buck has to stop somewhere. Two different parties take their differences for arbitration to the highest court in Europe. In this legal battle there will be a winner and loser. Now there is a provision to appeal the Chamber decision to the Grand Chamber.
I detect similarities in this case with another case, also about a cross – but in this case it is a cross on a ballot paper that is the issue. In both cases it was argued that the Chamber reached the wrong decision. Some of the points and principles are the same. By joining the Council of Europe and EU, Member States surrender part of their sovereignty. No longer totally independent but part of a union. Shared values, common purpose. In a sense, Italy and the UK disappear within the European State. Even when the UK lost its appeal to the Grand Chamber, it was said that the UK disagreed and simply ignored the decision. A clear distinction between theory and practice emerges. Furthermore, the challenge goes from the legal to the political arena.
I accept that a crucifix is a religious symbol. However, in my view, it does not follow that children necessarily “would feel that they were being educated in a school environment bearing the stamp of a given religion” just because of the presence of a cross. That’s a bit like saying a hotel is religious just because there maybe a Gideon’s Bible in the bedside table drawer. On the other hand, if the teaching at a school, for example, engaged in Bible thumping then this would be a stronger sign than a crucifix. I have worn a crucifix not because of religion but simply because I liked the design and it said “Sterling Silver” on the reverse.
There have been legal and political developments in Europe recently. The Interlaken Conference in February, and ratification of Protocol 14 of the Lisbon Treaty by Russia. The Court and Council of Europe felt threatened and were granted new powers. These come into force on 1 June 2010. The Conference referred to the need to make more use of the subsidiarity principle. And, Member States were required to re-affirm their commitments to abide by the Convention and Court decisions.
This post is just to highlight a few points and recent developments which need to be taken into account when considering a Court decision. The next post on this topic will examine the judgment and Court case-law on the subject.
Ian Parker Joseph asked: Would you like to have a go at interpreting this ruling? http://bit.ly/ceba4U
I like a challenge, even though I have no interest in religion and it is not really my area of law.
“The European Court of Human Rights shouldn’t overstep its authority and force a member nation to abandon traditions and beliefs that it has a sovereign right to protect if it so chooses,” said European-based ADF Legal Counsel Roger Kiska.
“An outside judicial body demanding that a nation must forsake and discontinue how it handles millennia-old traditions is a step towards an authoritarian system that no country anywhere on the globe should welcome,” contends Kiska. “The MEPs are encouraged that they will be able to submit their views to the court and defend the rights of all sovereign European member states over such matters.”
I detect a flaw in the logic of this argument.
However, I can also see flawed reasoning in the Court’s decision.
In 2009 the ECHR unanimously agreed with Lautsi’s argument saying that the “presence of the crucifix – which it was impossible not to notice in the classrooms – could easily be interpreted by pupils of all ages as a religious sign and they would feel that they were being educated in a school environment bearing the stamp of a given religion.” The court found: “The compulsory display of a symbol of a given confession in premises used by the public authorities, and especially in classrooms, thus restricted the right of parents to educate their children in conformity with their convictions, and the right of children to believe or not to believe.”
The European Convention is clear; the decision of the Court is final. Member States of the Council of Europe and EU have agreed this position; therefore it is difficult to see how the Court can overstep its authority. The Court has absolute jurisdiction. The buck has to stop somewhere. Two different parties take their differences for arbitration to the highest court in Europe. In this legal battle there will be a winner and loser. Now there is a provision to appeal the Chamber decision to the Grand Chamber.
I detect similarities in this case with another case, also about a cross – but in this case it is a cross on a ballot paper that is the issue. In both cases it was argued that the Chamber reached the wrong decision. Some of the points and principles are the same. By joining the Council of Europe and EU, Member States surrender part of their sovereignty. No longer totally independent but part of a union. Shared values, common purpose. In a sense, Italy and the UK disappear within the European State. Even when the UK lost its appeal to the Grand Chamber, it was said that the UK disagreed and simply ignored the decision. A clear distinction between theory and practice emerges. Furthermore, the challenge goes from the legal to the political arena.
I accept that a crucifix is a religious symbol. However, in my view, it does not follow that children necessarily “would feel that they were being educated in a school environment bearing the stamp of a given religion” just because of the presence of a cross. That’s a bit like saying a hotel is religious just because there maybe a Gideon’s Bible in the bedside table drawer. On the other hand, if the teaching at a school, for example, engaged in Bible thumping then this would be a stronger sign than a crucifix. I have worn a crucifix not because of religion but simply because I liked the design and it said “Sterling Silver” on the reverse.
There have been legal and political developments in Europe recently. The Interlaken Conference in February, and ratification of Protocol 14 of the Lisbon Treaty by Russia. The Court and Council of Europe felt threatened and were granted new powers. These come into force on 1 June 2010. The Conference referred to the need to make more use of the subsidiarity principle. And, Member States were required to re-affirm their commitments to abide by the Convention and Court decisions.
This post is just to highlight a few points and recent developments which need to be taken into account when considering a Court decision. The next post on this topic will examine the judgment and Court case-law on the subject.
David Laws is a sneak thief
David Laws is a sneak thief
If you cannot trust an MP with other people's money, then that is it in a capitalist society.
David Laws has apologised for being homosexual, however, that is not the charge.
The charge is one of acting dishonestly with taxpayers money, to the tune of £40,000. Given that David Laws is a millionaire, he does not have any excuse to steal from many of those who are a lot poorer than him. Zac Goldsmith claimed that because he is independently wealthy, he is not in politics for the money therefore he can be trusted. This case highlights that independent wealth does not mean that one is necessarily honest.
David Laws is claiming that he stole the £40,000 because he and his partner, James Lundie, wished to protect their privacy. This is not a justification for being a thief. In any event, it is more likely that their privacy would have benefitted by David Laws being honest. Then he would not have attracted the adverse media attention.
“Anyone who knows David, knows he is someone of great integrity,” a friend of David Laws has said. However, integrity and fiddling expenses do not go together. Someone with integrity would not fiddle expenses. David Laws must be the only man during inflation whose cost of living expenses went down instead of up. However, his went down purely and simply because the rules had changed from not being required to provide receipts for expenses claimed to having to provide receipts.
He typically claimed between £50 and £150 a month for utilities and £100 to £200 for maintenance. Receipts were not provided to back up the claims.
However, in April 2008, the rules were changed and MPs had to provide receipts for any claims above £25. Mr Laws’s expense claims dropped sharply. For example, he claimed only £37 a month for utilities.
He obviously claimed the expenses just because the rules allowed him to do so. The rules were wrong, but more importantly David Laws was wrong to take the money just because nobody was looking. This makes him a sneak thief.
If you cannot trust an MP with other people's money, then that is it in a capitalist society.
David Laws has apologised for being homosexual, however, that is not the charge.
The charge is one of acting dishonestly with taxpayers money, to the tune of £40,000. Given that David Laws is a millionaire, he does not have any excuse to steal from many of those who are a lot poorer than him. Zac Goldsmith claimed that because he is independently wealthy, he is not in politics for the money therefore he can be trusted. This case highlights that independent wealth does not mean that one is necessarily honest.
David Laws is claiming that he stole the £40,000 because he and his partner, James Lundie, wished to protect their privacy. This is not a justification for being a thief. In any event, it is more likely that their privacy would have benefitted by David Laws being honest. Then he would not have attracted the adverse media attention.
“Anyone who knows David, knows he is someone of great integrity,” a friend of David Laws has said. However, integrity and fiddling expenses do not go together. Someone with integrity would not fiddle expenses. David Laws must be the only man during inflation whose cost of living expenses went down instead of up. However, his went down purely and simply because the rules had changed from not being required to provide receipts for expenses claimed to having to provide receipts.
He typically claimed between £50 and £150 a month for utilities and £100 to £200 for maintenance. Receipts were not provided to back up the claims.
However, in April 2008, the rules were changed and MPs had to provide receipts for any claims above £25. Mr Laws’s expense claims dropped sharply. For example, he claimed only £37 a month for utilities.
He obviously claimed the expenses just because the rules allowed him to do so. The rules were wrong, but more importantly David Laws was wrong to take the money just because nobody was looking. This makes him a sneak thief.
Muslim Facebook set up to combat cartoons of Prophet Mohammed
Muslim Facebook set up to combat cartoons of Prophet Mohammed
Prophet Mohammed as a pig
Facebook rival launched in Pakistan after 'blasphemous' Prophet images published
Web developers in Pakistan have launched a version of Facebook for the Muslim world after the social networking site was blocked for showing “blasphemous” images of the Prophet Mohammed.
To be more concerned about mockery than 8 year old girls being punished under Sharia Law for getting raped by a group of Muslim men...
Oink! Oink!
Prophet Mohammed as a pigFacebook rival launched in Pakistan after 'blasphemous' Prophet images published
Web developers in Pakistan have launched a version of Facebook for the Muslim world after the social networking site was blocked for showing “blasphemous” images of the Prophet Mohammed.
To be more concerned about mockery than 8 year old girls being punished under Sharia Law for getting raped by a group of Muslim men...
Oink! Oink!
David Laws and the Rent Boy!
David Laws and the Rent Boy!
MPs' Expenses: Treasury chief David Laws, his secret lover and a £40,000 claim
"The Cabinet minister charged with rescuing the Government’s finances has used taxpayers’ money to pay more than £40,000 to his long-term partner, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.
David Laws, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, claimed up to £950 a month for eight years to rent rooms in two properties owned by his partner. The claims could be against parliamentary rules governing MPs’ second home expenses.
On Friday night, Mr Laws apologised and announced that he would “immediately” pay back tens of thousands of pounds claimed for rent and other housing costs between 2006 and 2009. He also referred himself to the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner".
Is the 'just say sorry and pay back the stolen money' also going to extend to those caught up in the Criminal Justice trap?
MPs' Expenses: Treasury chief David Laws, his secret lover and a £40,000 claim
"The Cabinet minister charged with rescuing the Government’s finances has used taxpayers’ money to pay more than £40,000 to his long-term partner, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.
David Laws, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, claimed up to £950 a month for eight years to rent rooms in two properties owned by his partner. The claims could be against parliamentary rules governing MPs’ second home expenses.
On Friday night, Mr Laws apologised and announced that he would “immediately” pay back tens of thousands of pounds claimed for rent and other housing costs between 2006 and 2009. He also referred himself to the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner".
Is the 'just say sorry and pay back the stolen money' also going to extend to those caught up in the Criminal Justice trap?
Friday, May 28, 2010
David Cameron's first big lie!
David Cameron's first big lie!
According to Downing Street: "Before a final decision was made on who might appear on behalf of the Government, the BBC booked John Redwood.”
In the Prisoners Votes Case, Labour failed to make a decision during the whole Parliamentary term of 5 years!
How many years before Downing Street would have reached a final decision on who to put into bat?
According to Downing Street: "Before a final decision was made on who might appear on behalf of the Government, the BBC booked John Redwood.”
In the Prisoners Votes Case, Labour failed to make a decision during the whole Parliamentary term of 5 years!
How many years before Downing Street would have reached a final decision on who to put into bat?
Prison health 'not good enough' despite overhaul
Prison health 'not good enough' despite overhaul
Prison healthcare is still not good enough - four years after it was revamped to bring it up to NHS standards, a report claims.
The joint Care Quality Commission and the Inspectorate of Prisons study said while there were signs of improvement, a number of areas of weakness remained.
In particular, it highlighted the drug treatment as a major concern.
The inspectors carried out reviews of 21 NHS trusts, responsible for more than a quarter of England's jails.
Prison healthcare is still not good enough - four years after it was revamped to bring it up to NHS standards, a report claims.
The joint Care Quality Commission and the Inspectorate of Prisons study said while there were signs of improvement, a number of areas of weakness remained.
In particular, it highlighted the drug treatment as a major concern.
The inspectors carried out reviews of 21 NHS trusts, responsible for more than a quarter of England's jails.
Yorkshire Ripper 2: A trip down memory lane
Yorkshire Ripper 2: A trip down memory lane
This case brings back memories for me. I was born in Bradford, a short walk from the Red Light district. In the late 1960s and early 1970s I lived in Leeds. Several of the women killed by the Yorkshire Ripper were dumped on my stomping ground. I was even questioned in relation to the murders before Peter Suttcliffe was arrested and charged. Luckily I was in Prestion Prison when 2 of them were murdered, therefore I had a perfect alibi.
Man charged with murders of three Bradford women
This case brings back memories for me. I was born in Bradford, a short walk from the Red Light district. In the late 1960s and early 1970s I lived in Leeds. Several of the women killed by the Yorkshire Ripper were dumped on my stomping ground. I was even questioned in relation to the murders before Peter Suttcliffe was arrested and charged. Luckily I was in Prestion Prison when 2 of them were murdered, therefore I had a perfect alibi.
Man charged with murders of three Bradford women
Thursday, May 27, 2010
McCanns: Libel trouble?
McCanns: Libel trouble?
"It is (I believe) a fact very often British newspapers, when sued in libel, give up and settle when one would not expect them to do so...Libel law is tilted against the media".
However, soon the McCanns will find themselves in trouble if this new libel law gets passed in Parliament.
"It is (I believe) a fact very often British newspapers, when sued in libel, give up and settle when one would not expect them to do so...Libel law is tilted against the media".
However, soon the McCanns will find themselves in trouble if this new libel law gets passed in Parliament.
David Miliband's criminal record
David Miliband's criminal record
What David Miliband said in his Forward and Introduction to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office Annual Report on Human Rights (2009) published in March 2010:
“When we talk about human rights we talk about a body of law, but we also talk about the inherent sense that we are entitled to certain freedoms and protections…But some governments are increasingly retreating to a defensive and isolationist view of human rights…We must not be afraid to engage in debates about human rights. But we must also remain committed to championing those rights around the world and to assert their applicability to every man, woman and child”.
“The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and the UN Charter make the human rights situation in any country the valid concern of all states. No country has a perfect human rights record, although states fall short of that goal to widely varying degrees”.
“…it is not possible for the UK to address every human rights concern in every country”.
“We must keep banging the human rights drum until they are genuinely universal and no longer under threat. We have some way to go”.
“We must continue to support people who demand their human rights across the world. And we must uphold human rights to the highest standards at home in the UK”.
Nowhere in the Report does David Miliband address the UK human rights violations, some of which he actually supported or was responsible for whilst he was in Office.
This Amnesty Report covering the same period highlights some of the human rights abuses laid at David Miliband's door.
What a shame that Amenesty failed to report upon the 75,000 convicted prisoners in the UK denied their human right to vote. Once again David Miliband played a leading role in these abuses as Foreign Secretary, because he represented the UK before the Council of Europe.
What David Miliband said in his Forward and Introduction to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office Annual Report on Human Rights (2009) published in March 2010:
“When we talk about human rights we talk about a body of law, but we also talk about the inherent sense that we are entitled to certain freedoms and protections…But some governments are increasingly retreating to a defensive and isolationist view of human rights…We must not be afraid to engage in debates about human rights. But we must also remain committed to championing those rights around the world and to assert their applicability to every man, woman and child”.
“The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and the UN Charter make the human rights situation in any country the valid concern of all states. No country has a perfect human rights record, although states fall short of that goal to widely varying degrees”.
“…it is not possible for the UK to address every human rights concern in every country”.
“We must keep banging the human rights drum until they are genuinely universal and no longer under threat. We have some way to go”.
“We must continue to support people who demand their human rights across the world. And we must uphold human rights to the highest standards at home in the UK”.
Nowhere in the Report does David Miliband address the UK human rights violations, some of which he actually supported or was responsible for whilst he was in Office.
This Amnesty Report covering the same period highlights some of the human rights abuses laid at David Miliband's door.
What a shame that Amenesty failed to report upon the 75,000 convicted prisoners in the UK denied their human right to vote. Once again David Miliband played a leading role in these abuses as Foreign Secretary, because he represented the UK before the Council of Europe.
Amnesty International Report 2010
Amnesty International Report 2010
Reports implicating the UK in grave violations of human rights of people held overseas continued to emerge. Calls for independent investigations into the
UK’s role in these violations went unheeded. The government’s attempts to return people to countries known to practise torture on the basis of “diplomatic
assurances” (unenforceable promises from the countries where these individuals were to be returned) continued. The European Court of Human Rights found that, by detaining a number of foreign nationals without charge or trial (internment), the
UK had violated their human rights. The implementation of measures adopted with the stated aim of countering terrorism led to human rights violations, including unfair judicial proceedings. The executive gained powers to circumvent and undermine the independence of coroners’ inquests. Twenty years after Patrick Finucane’s death, an
inquiry into state collusion in his killing had yet to be established.
Counter-terror and security Torture and other ill-treatment
Further reports emerged that grave human rights violations had been committed with the knowledge, complicity and, in some cases, in the presence of UK intelligence officers, including in Bangladesh, Egypt, Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates, and
that UK officials had attempted to cover up the UK’s involvement. In August, two Parliamentary Committees expressed concern about the UK’s involvement in the torture of “terror suspects” held abroad. However, calls for independent investigations
into the UK’s role in these and other gross violations of human rights perpetrated in the context of the so-called war on terror, including into the UK’s involvement
in the US-led rendition programme (the unlawful transfers of terrorist suspects between countries), went unheeded.
In February, Binyam Mohamed, an Ethiopian national formerly residing in the UK, was released from US custody at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where he had been held since 2004, and returned to the UK. He had been detained in Pakistan in April 2002 and then
transported under the US-led rendition programme to Morocco, then to Afghanistan, and then on to Guantánamo Bay. The US government did not dispute that his treatment amounted to torture or other illtreatment. UK judges ruled repeatedly during the year
that the UK government should disclose what the US Central Intelligence Agency told the UK’s Security Service (MI5) and what the UK’s Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) knew of the unlawful treatment of Binyam Mohamed. They also made clear that “the
relationship of the United Kingdom Government to the United States authorities in connection with [Binyam Mohamed] was far beyond that of a bystander or witness to the alleged wrongdoing.” The UK government’s appeal against the disclosure rulings
was pending at the end of the year. In March it was announced that the police would begin an investigation into the allegations of possible criminal wrongdoing.
By the end of the year, Shaker Aamer, a Saudi Arabian national, was the only known remaining former UK resident still held in Guantánamo Bay. Following his capture in Afghanistan he had been detained by US military authorities in various locations and ultimately in Guantánamo Bay. In December, the High Court of England and Wales ordered the UK authorities to disclose certain documents to support his case that any
confessions he might have made during his detention had been induced by ill-treatment by US and UK officials, thereby discrediting such confessions and
improving his prospects of release.
In February, the government admitted that, contrary to earlier statements, two individuals captured by UK forces in Iraq in 2004 and transferred to US detention
had subsequently been moved to a US detention facility in Afghanistan. The US government categorized them as “unlawful enemy combatants”. There was concern that efforts to identify them were being hampered by the UK government.
In December, the UK All Party Parliamentary Group on Extraordinary Rendition began legal proceedings in the USA, requesting disclosure from various US security agencies about the UK’s role in the US-led rendition programme. This included the
unlawful transfer of two people through the UK territory of Diego Garcia, and the handover in Iraq by UK special forces to US forces of other individuals who were then flown to Afghanistan.
Deportations
Attempts continued to deport individuals alleged to pose a threat to “national security” to countries where they would be at risk of grave human rights violations,
including torture. The government continued to argue that “diplomatic assurances” were sufficient to reduce the risk they would face.
In February, two Algerian nationals, referred to in legal proceedings in the UK as “RB” and “U”, and Omar Othman (also known as Abu Qatada), a Jordanian national, lost their appeals before the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords (the Law Lords) against deportation to their respective countries on “national security” grounds. In all three cases the government was relying on “diplomatic assurances”, given by the Algerian and Jordanian governments respectively, claiming that they would sufficiently reduce the risk that the men would be subjected to grave human rights violations, including torture, on their return.
The following day, the European Court of Human Rights issued interim measures indicating to the government that Omar Othman should not be deported to Jordan. At the end of the year, his case was pending.
In April, 10 Pakistani students in the UK were arrested and detained under suspicion of involvement in terrorism. They were later released without charge but immediately rearrested and detained again, pending deportation on “national security” grounds.
They were held in high security prisons. By December, eight of them had abandoned their appeals against deportation and had returned to Pakistan.
In December, the High Court of England and Wales ruled against the government and the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC). It held that, even in the context of bail proceedings before the SIAC, a fair hearing required sufficient disclosure, and that exclusive reliance on secret material would breach fair trial standards.
Internment
In February, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights unanimously ruled that, by interning nine foreign nationals on suspicion of terrorism, the UK had violated their right to liberty. Detaining them without charge or trial had
discriminated unjustifiably between them and UK nationals. The Court also found that four of the nine had not been able to effectively challenge the allegations against them because the open material on which the government had relied consisted purely
of general assertions and the national court’s decision to maintain their detention was based solely or to a decisive degree on secret material to which neither they nor their lawyers of choice had had access. The Court also held that each of the nine had been denied the right to compensation for the above violations.
“Control orders”
As of 10 December there were 12 “control orders” in force under the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005. The Act gives a government minister unprecedented powers to issue “control orders” to restrict the liberty, movement and activities of people purportedly suspected of involvement in terrorism, on the basis of secret intelligence.
In June, the Law Lords applied the judgement of the European Court of Human Rights (see above) and allowed the appeals of three individuals, referred to as “AF”, “AN” and “AE”, against the imposition of “control orders”, finding that it had breached their right to a fair hearing. The Law Lords ruled unanimously that sufficient disclosure must be given to “AF”, “AN” and “AE”. The judgement ruled that people subjected to “control orders” had to be given sufficient information about the allegations against them to enable them to mount an effective defence, and that, where the case against the “controlee” was based solely or to a decisive degree on closed materials, fair trial standards would not be met.
In August, Mahmoud Abu Rideh, a stateless Palestinian who was originally interned in December 2001 under powers enacted in the aftermath of the September 2001 attacks in the USA and then made subject to a “control order” since March 2005, said that he could no longer stay in the UK and wished to leave. Following the threat of legal proceedings, the government agreed to provide him with a certificate of travel that permitted him to leave and re-enter the UK for up to five years. Nonetheless, almost as soon as Mahmoud Abu Rideh had left the country, the government cancelled his certificate of travel, and ordered his permanent exclusion from the UK.
Armed forces in Iraq
In June, the European Court of Human Rights declared partly admissible the application lodged against the UK on behalf of Faisal Attiyah Nassar Al-Saadoon and Khalaf Hussain Mufdhi, two Iraqi nationals. They were arrested and detained in 2003 in Iraq in UK-run detention facilities. In December 2008, they were transferred to Iraqi custody despite substantial grounds for believing that they were at risk of being subjected to an unfair trial before the Iraq High Tribunal followed by execution, and in spite of the European Court of Human Rights’ interim measures indicating that the UK government should not transfer them to the Iraqi authorities until further notice.
In May, ruling against the government, the Court of Appeal of England and Wales confirmed that UK soldiers on military service in Iraq were entitled to benefit from the rights guaranteed by the Human Rights Act 1998.
At the end of the year, a public inquiry under the Inquiries Act 2005 into the circumstances surrounding the death of Baha Mousa was ongoing. He died at a
UK-run detention facility in Iraq in September 2003, having been tortured by UK troops over a period of 36 hours.
In November, the government announced a public inquiry under the Inquiries Act 2005 into the case of Khuder al-Sweady and five other Iraqi men. Among other things, the case concerns complaints that Khuder al-Sweady was murdered and five other Iraqis
were tortured or otherwise ill-treated by UK soldiers while being detained in Iraq in 2004.
Legal developments
In November, parliament passed the Coroners and Justice Act 2009. It gave the executive powers to order the suspension of a coroner’s inquest and institute instead an inquiry under the Inquiries Act 2005, maintaining that the latter would be adequate to investigate the cause of death.
Police and security forces
In April, the policing of demonstrations at the G-20 Summit in London gave rise to concern. There were reports of disproportionate use of force; the use of weapons such as batons and shields during charges against demonstrators; and the intentional removal of police identification numbers.
Publicly available video footage appeared to show that on 1 April a police officer wearing a helmet and balaclava struck Ian Tomlinson, a 47-year-old newspaper seller, with a baton on the back of his leg, and pushed him over. At the time of contact, Ian
Tomlinson had his back to a line of riot police, his hands in his pockets, and was walking away from them. Ian Tomlinson collapsed and died shortly afterwards. The police only admitted that contact had occurred following publication of the footage. By the end of the year, one police officer was being investigated on suspicion of manslaughter.
In February, the Crown Prosecution Service of England andWales announced that there was insufficient evidence that any offence had been committed by any individual police officers in relation to the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes, a Brazilian
national shot dead by police officers in London in 2005. The decision appeared to sanction impunity for the killing. In November, the Metropolitan police agreed to
pay compensation to Jean Charles de Menezes’ family.
In March, the Chief Commissioner of London police agreed to pay Babar Ahmad compensation and exemplary damages after admitting that in December 2003 police officers had subjected him to a violent, sustained and unprovoked assault, including by twice placing him in a life-threatening neck-hold.
Northern Ireland
Dissident republican groups claimed responsibility for the killings in March of two soldiers, Mark Quinsey and Patrick Azimkar, and of police constable Stephen Paul Carroll.
In June, journalist Suzanne Breen won her fight against the application by the Police Service of Northern Ireland for her to hand over materials relating to the killings of the two soldiers. The Recorder of Belfast ruled that to give the material to the police would endanger her life and acknowledged that the protection of the confidentiality of sources for journalists was part of the right to freedom of
expression.
Collusion and political killings
In January, the Consultative Group on the Past set up by the government in 2007 recommended establishing an independent commission to deal with the legacy of the past by combining processes of reconciliation, justice and information recovery.
Twenty years after the killing of prominent human rights lawyer Patrick Finucane, the government continued to renege on its commitment to establish an independent inquiry into state collusion in his death.
Three public inquiries into allegations of state collusion in the killings of Robert Hamill, Rosemary Nelson, a human rights lawyer, and Billy Wright finished taking evidence. Final reports were expected in 2010. The exclusion from a number of sessions of each inquiry of family members and their lawyers gave rise to concern.
Discrimination – Roma
Following an increase in the preceding months in verbal and physical attacks, in June over 100 Roma fled their homes in Belfast.
Refugees, asylum-seekers and migrants
In October, contrary to the advice of UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, the government attempted to forcibly return 44 Iraqis to Baghdad. On arrival the Iraqi authorities accepted only 10 and the other 34 Iraqis were flown back to the UK and detained on arrival.
In November, the government conceded that all non-Arab Darfuris, regardless of their political or other affiliations, were at risk of persecution in Darfur and that internal relocation elsewhere in Sudan was not currently available.
In December, the Royal Colleges of Paediatrics and Child Health, General Practitioners and Psychiatrists issued a joint statement calling for an immediate end
to the administrative detention of children under Immigration Act powers on the basis that it was “shameful”, “damaging”, and “permanently harmful to children’s health”.
In July, the Chief Inspector of Prisons of England and Wales found that conditions at a privately run immigration detention centre, Tinsley House, near London, were “wholly unacceptable” for women and children and that conditions had worsened since the last inspection to an “encroaching ‘prison culture’”. Concern was expressed about the detention of families for over 72 hours, and some for many weeks.
Violence against women and girls
In November, the government launched a strategy to address violence against women in line with commitments made under the 1995 United Nations Beijing Platform for Action.
In November, the government announced a three month pilot project to address the human rights crisis facing women at risk of violence and who have insecure immigration status.
Amnesty International visits/reports
Amnesty International delegates observed court proceedings in
England throughout the year, including challenges to “control orders”,
appeals against deportations with assurances, and legal actions brought
against the government by former Guantánamo detainees.
United Kingdom: The case of Binyam Mohamed - “championing the rule
of law”? (EUR 45/001/2009)
UK/Northern Ireland: Patrick Finucane - twenty years on, still no inquiry
(EUR 45/002/2009)
Independent investigation into alleged UK involvement in torture long
overdue (EUR 45/009/2009)
Reports implicating the UK in grave violations of human rights of people held overseas continued to emerge. Calls for independent investigations into the
UK’s role in these violations went unheeded. The government’s attempts to return people to countries known to practise torture on the basis of “diplomatic
assurances” (unenforceable promises from the countries where these individuals were to be returned) continued. The European Court of Human Rights found that, by detaining a number of foreign nationals without charge or trial (internment), the
UK had violated their human rights. The implementation of measures adopted with the stated aim of countering terrorism led to human rights violations, including unfair judicial proceedings. The executive gained powers to circumvent and undermine the independence of coroners’ inquests. Twenty years after Patrick Finucane’s death, an
inquiry into state collusion in his killing had yet to be established.
Counter-terror and security Torture and other ill-treatment
Further reports emerged that grave human rights violations had been committed with the knowledge, complicity and, in some cases, in the presence of UK intelligence officers, including in Bangladesh, Egypt, Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates, and
that UK officials had attempted to cover up the UK’s involvement. In August, two Parliamentary Committees expressed concern about the UK’s involvement in the torture of “terror suspects” held abroad. However, calls for independent investigations
into the UK’s role in these and other gross violations of human rights perpetrated in the context of the so-called war on terror, including into the UK’s involvement
in the US-led rendition programme (the unlawful transfers of terrorist suspects between countries), went unheeded.
In February, Binyam Mohamed, an Ethiopian national formerly residing in the UK, was released from US custody at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where he had been held since 2004, and returned to the UK. He had been detained in Pakistan in April 2002 and then
transported under the US-led rendition programme to Morocco, then to Afghanistan, and then on to Guantánamo Bay. The US government did not dispute that his treatment amounted to torture or other illtreatment. UK judges ruled repeatedly during the year
that the UK government should disclose what the US Central Intelligence Agency told the UK’s Security Service (MI5) and what the UK’s Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) knew of the unlawful treatment of Binyam Mohamed. They also made clear that “the
relationship of the United Kingdom Government to the United States authorities in connection with [Binyam Mohamed] was far beyond that of a bystander or witness to the alleged wrongdoing.” The UK government’s appeal against the disclosure rulings
was pending at the end of the year. In March it was announced that the police would begin an investigation into the allegations of possible criminal wrongdoing.
By the end of the year, Shaker Aamer, a Saudi Arabian national, was the only known remaining former UK resident still held in Guantánamo Bay. Following his capture in Afghanistan he had been detained by US military authorities in various locations and ultimately in Guantánamo Bay. In December, the High Court of England and Wales ordered the UK authorities to disclose certain documents to support his case that any
confessions he might have made during his detention had been induced by ill-treatment by US and UK officials, thereby discrediting such confessions and
improving his prospects of release.
In February, the government admitted that, contrary to earlier statements, two individuals captured by UK forces in Iraq in 2004 and transferred to US detention
had subsequently been moved to a US detention facility in Afghanistan. The US government categorized them as “unlawful enemy combatants”. There was concern that efforts to identify them were being hampered by the UK government.
In December, the UK All Party Parliamentary Group on Extraordinary Rendition began legal proceedings in the USA, requesting disclosure from various US security agencies about the UK’s role in the US-led rendition programme. This included the
unlawful transfer of two people through the UK territory of Diego Garcia, and the handover in Iraq by UK special forces to US forces of other individuals who were then flown to Afghanistan.
Deportations
Attempts continued to deport individuals alleged to pose a threat to “national security” to countries where they would be at risk of grave human rights violations,
including torture. The government continued to argue that “diplomatic assurances” were sufficient to reduce the risk they would face.
In February, two Algerian nationals, referred to in legal proceedings in the UK as “RB” and “U”, and Omar Othman (also known as Abu Qatada), a Jordanian national, lost their appeals before the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords (the Law Lords) against deportation to their respective countries on “national security” grounds. In all three cases the government was relying on “diplomatic assurances”, given by the Algerian and Jordanian governments respectively, claiming that they would sufficiently reduce the risk that the men would be subjected to grave human rights violations, including torture, on their return.
The following day, the European Court of Human Rights issued interim measures indicating to the government that Omar Othman should not be deported to Jordan. At the end of the year, his case was pending.
In April, 10 Pakistani students in the UK were arrested and detained under suspicion of involvement in terrorism. They were later released without charge but immediately rearrested and detained again, pending deportation on “national security” grounds.
They were held in high security prisons. By December, eight of them had abandoned their appeals against deportation and had returned to Pakistan.
In December, the High Court of England and Wales ruled against the government and the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC). It held that, even in the context of bail proceedings before the SIAC, a fair hearing required sufficient disclosure, and that exclusive reliance on secret material would breach fair trial standards.
Internment
In February, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights unanimously ruled that, by interning nine foreign nationals on suspicion of terrorism, the UK had violated their right to liberty. Detaining them without charge or trial had
discriminated unjustifiably between them and UK nationals. The Court also found that four of the nine had not been able to effectively challenge the allegations against them because the open material on which the government had relied consisted purely
of general assertions and the national court’s decision to maintain their detention was based solely or to a decisive degree on secret material to which neither they nor their lawyers of choice had had access. The Court also held that each of the nine had been denied the right to compensation for the above violations.
“Control orders”
As of 10 December there were 12 “control orders” in force under the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005. The Act gives a government minister unprecedented powers to issue “control orders” to restrict the liberty, movement and activities of people purportedly suspected of involvement in terrorism, on the basis of secret intelligence.
In June, the Law Lords applied the judgement of the European Court of Human Rights (see above) and allowed the appeals of three individuals, referred to as “AF”, “AN” and “AE”, against the imposition of “control orders”, finding that it had breached their right to a fair hearing. The Law Lords ruled unanimously that sufficient disclosure must be given to “AF”, “AN” and “AE”. The judgement ruled that people subjected to “control orders” had to be given sufficient information about the allegations against them to enable them to mount an effective defence, and that, where the case against the “controlee” was based solely or to a decisive degree on closed materials, fair trial standards would not be met.
In August, Mahmoud Abu Rideh, a stateless Palestinian who was originally interned in December 2001 under powers enacted in the aftermath of the September 2001 attacks in the USA and then made subject to a “control order” since March 2005, said that he could no longer stay in the UK and wished to leave. Following the threat of legal proceedings, the government agreed to provide him with a certificate of travel that permitted him to leave and re-enter the UK for up to five years. Nonetheless, almost as soon as Mahmoud Abu Rideh had left the country, the government cancelled his certificate of travel, and ordered his permanent exclusion from the UK.
Armed forces in Iraq
In June, the European Court of Human Rights declared partly admissible the application lodged against the UK on behalf of Faisal Attiyah Nassar Al-Saadoon and Khalaf Hussain Mufdhi, two Iraqi nationals. They were arrested and detained in 2003 in Iraq in UK-run detention facilities. In December 2008, they were transferred to Iraqi custody despite substantial grounds for believing that they were at risk of being subjected to an unfair trial before the Iraq High Tribunal followed by execution, and in spite of the European Court of Human Rights’ interim measures indicating that the UK government should not transfer them to the Iraqi authorities until further notice.
In May, ruling against the government, the Court of Appeal of England and Wales confirmed that UK soldiers on military service in Iraq were entitled to benefit from the rights guaranteed by the Human Rights Act 1998.
At the end of the year, a public inquiry under the Inquiries Act 2005 into the circumstances surrounding the death of Baha Mousa was ongoing. He died at a
UK-run detention facility in Iraq in September 2003, having been tortured by UK troops over a period of 36 hours.
In November, the government announced a public inquiry under the Inquiries Act 2005 into the case of Khuder al-Sweady and five other Iraqi men. Among other things, the case concerns complaints that Khuder al-Sweady was murdered and five other Iraqis
were tortured or otherwise ill-treated by UK soldiers while being detained in Iraq in 2004.
Legal developments
In November, parliament passed the Coroners and Justice Act 2009. It gave the executive powers to order the suspension of a coroner’s inquest and institute instead an inquiry under the Inquiries Act 2005, maintaining that the latter would be adequate to investigate the cause of death.
Police and security forces
In April, the policing of demonstrations at the G-20 Summit in London gave rise to concern. There were reports of disproportionate use of force; the use of weapons such as batons and shields during charges against demonstrators; and the intentional removal of police identification numbers.
Publicly available video footage appeared to show that on 1 April a police officer wearing a helmet and balaclava struck Ian Tomlinson, a 47-year-old newspaper seller, with a baton on the back of his leg, and pushed him over. At the time of contact, Ian
Tomlinson had his back to a line of riot police, his hands in his pockets, and was walking away from them. Ian Tomlinson collapsed and died shortly afterwards. The police only admitted that contact had occurred following publication of the footage. By the end of the year, one police officer was being investigated on suspicion of manslaughter.
In February, the Crown Prosecution Service of England andWales announced that there was insufficient evidence that any offence had been committed by any individual police officers in relation to the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes, a Brazilian
national shot dead by police officers in London in 2005. The decision appeared to sanction impunity for the killing. In November, the Metropolitan police agreed to
pay compensation to Jean Charles de Menezes’ family.
In March, the Chief Commissioner of London police agreed to pay Babar Ahmad compensation and exemplary damages after admitting that in December 2003 police officers had subjected him to a violent, sustained and unprovoked assault, including by twice placing him in a life-threatening neck-hold.
Northern Ireland
Dissident republican groups claimed responsibility for the killings in March of two soldiers, Mark Quinsey and Patrick Azimkar, and of police constable Stephen Paul Carroll.
In June, journalist Suzanne Breen won her fight against the application by the Police Service of Northern Ireland for her to hand over materials relating to the killings of the two soldiers. The Recorder of Belfast ruled that to give the material to the police would endanger her life and acknowledged that the protection of the confidentiality of sources for journalists was part of the right to freedom of
expression.
Collusion and political killings
In January, the Consultative Group on the Past set up by the government in 2007 recommended establishing an independent commission to deal with the legacy of the past by combining processes of reconciliation, justice and information recovery.
Twenty years after the killing of prominent human rights lawyer Patrick Finucane, the government continued to renege on its commitment to establish an independent inquiry into state collusion in his death.
Three public inquiries into allegations of state collusion in the killings of Robert Hamill, Rosemary Nelson, a human rights lawyer, and Billy Wright finished taking evidence. Final reports were expected in 2010. The exclusion from a number of sessions of each inquiry of family members and their lawyers gave rise to concern.
Discrimination – Roma
Following an increase in the preceding months in verbal and physical attacks, in June over 100 Roma fled their homes in Belfast.
Refugees, asylum-seekers and migrants
In October, contrary to the advice of UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, the government attempted to forcibly return 44 Iraqis to Baghdad. On arrival the Iraqi authorities accepted only 10 and the other 34 Iraqis were flown back to the UK and detained on arrival.
In November, the government conceded that all non-Arab Darfuris, regardless of their political or other affiliations, were at risk of persecution in Darfur and that internal relocation elsewhere in Sudan was not currently available.
In December, the Royal Colleges of Paediatrics and Child Health, General Practitioners and Psychiatrists issued a joint statement calling for an immediate end
to the administrative detention of children under Immigration Act powers on the basis that it was “shameful”, “damaging”, and “permanently harmful to children’s health”.
In July, the Chief Inspector of Prisons of England and Wales found that conditions at a privately run immigration detention centre, Tinsley House, near London, were “wholly unacceptable” for women and children and that conditions had worsened since the last inspection to an “encroaching ‘prison culture’”. Concern was expressed about the detention of families for over 72 hours, and some for many weeks.
Violence against women and girls
In November, the government launched a strategy to address violence against women in line with commitments made under the 1995 United Nations Beijing Platform for Action.
In November, the government announced a three month pilot project to address the human rights crisis facing women at risk of violence and who have insecure immigration status.
Amnesty International visits/reports
Amnesty International delegates observed court proceedings in
England throughout the year, including challenges to “control orders”,
appeals against deportations with assurances, and legal actions brought
against the government by former Guantánamo detainees.
United Kingdom: The case of Binyam Mohamed - “championing the rule
of law”? (EUR 45/001/2009)
UK/Northern Ireland: Patrick Finucane - twenty years on, still no inquiry
(EUR 45/002/2009)
Independent investigation into alleged UK involvement in torture long
overdue (EUR 45/009/2009)
And they say crime doesn't pay?
And they say crime doesn't pay?
Court orders return of £32m in ‘largest pensions fraud since Maxwell’
"He added that since the total amount taken from the pension funds was £52m, it might be possible to pursue some of the defendants for further amounts".
Even if it was possible to claw back the £32m from off-shore companies, that still leaves a £20m profit!
Court orders return of £32m in ‘largest pensions fraud since Maxwell’
"He added that since the total amount taken from the pension funds was £52m, it might be possible to pursue some of the defendants for further amounts".
Even if it was possible to claw back the £32m from off-shore companies, that still leaves a £20m profit!
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
William Hague: New blog on the kid
William Hague: New blog on the kid
Well worth a read. Highly recommended.
Foreign Office blog by William Hague
Well worth a read. Highly recommended.
Foreign Office blog by William Hague
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Mumia Abu-Jamal JAILHOUSE LAWYERS: PRISONERS DEFENDING PRISONERS V THE USA
Mumia Abu-Jamal
JAILHOUSE LAWYERS:
PRISONERS DEFENDING PRISONERS V THE USA
“This is the story of law learned, not in the ivory towers of multi-billion-dollar endowed universities [but] in the bowels of the slave-ship, in the hidden, dank dungeons of America – the Prisonhouse of Nations.
“It is law learned in a stew of bitterness, under the constant threat of violence, in places where millions of people live, but millions of others wish to ignore or forget.
“It is law written with stubs of pencils, or with four-inch-long rubberized flex-pens, with grit, glimmerings of brilliance, and with clear knowledge that retaliation is right outside the cell door.
“It is a different perspective on the law, written from the bottom, with a faint hope that a right may be wronged, an injustice redressed.
“It is Hard Law.”
Foreword by Angela Y. Davis
Introduction to UK edition by
Selma James
To be published July 2010
by Crossroads Books £9.99.
An outstanding book — Ian Macdonald QC
Make way for inside voices. Everybody should read it — Flo Krause, barrister
A champion of law in an institution that is lawless. This book should be distributed throughout the prisons — Benjamin Zephaniah, poet, ex-prisoner
Mumia & the American experience illuminate what is possible for jailhouse lawyers in Britain — Ben Gunn, jailhouse lawyer
A must read for prisoners and prison reform groups — John Hirst, former jailhouse lawyer
In the grand tradition of prison writing — Frances Crook, Howard League for Penal Reform
Stories of gallant prisoners who do battle with the authorities, challenging the abuse of their peers — Clive Stafford Smith, Founder of Reprieve
A merciless critique of traditional lawyers. An international learning tool — Richard Small, Attorney, Jamaica
A brilliant analysis of the nature of law and the role of lawyers as instruments of injustice — Lord Anthony Gifford QC, UK Barrister and Attorney, Jamaica
Tells the truth about death row and its distinguished inhabitants — Legal Action for Women
The criminal justice system brought to bear on someone who is African American, articulate, and involved in change — Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking
A story never before told — J. Patrick O'Connor, author of The framing of Mumia Abu-Jamal
Mumia Abu-Jamal has once more offered us new ways of thinking about law, democracy, and power — Angela Y. Davis, from the Foreword
A crucial aspect of the growing movement against the prison-industrial complex — Selma James, from the Introduction to the UK Edition
Mumia Abu-Jamal, award winning journalist and former Black Panther, was convicted in 1982 of killing a policeman in a trial drenched in racism. He has spent most of his 28 years in prison on Pennsylvania’s death row. In 2008, a crucial appeal on the grounds of racism in jury selection was rejected. In January 2010 progress on his case was again blocked by the Supreme Court which sent a decision on the death penalty back to the lower courts. People all over the world have campaigned for his conviction to be overturned.
Mumia – as millions know him -- presents the moving struggles and reflections of fellow prisoners who, denied justice, have taken the legal process into their own hands. Jailhouse lawyers represent themselves and others inside, sometimes winning -- even in some cases winning their freedom -- but always resisting, learning, inspiring others to win.
Mumia’s latest book, his sixth, is perhaps his most important. The prison population in the US has exploded so that now one in every 99 people in the United States, and one in every nine Black men between the ages of twenty and 34, is in prison. The movement against prisons and against the death penalty has also grown. Jailhouse Lawyers prises open the clanging steel doors to reveal the hidden power of the anti-prison movement: individual women and men inside, using the law as their weapon.
Praise for Jailhouse Lawyers:
Make way for inside voices, make way for jailhouse lawyers. Even those of us who have daily contact with prisoners and prisons will never understand the full extent of the dehumanising process that takes place behind those walls. The daily abuses of power. The daily humiliations. The powerlessness to make one's voice heard and believed. This book brings us closer to this understanding. Everybody should read it. — Flo Krause, barrister working with UK jailhouse lawyers
“When you find someone who, like Mumia, makes it his business to learn the law and put their finger on the often blatant dishonesty and bias of the courts and judges, then you have an outstanding text book. This is such a book. — Ian Macdonald QC
Jailhouse Lawyers is not a collection of legal anecdotes, a compendium of courtroom gloating, but a rare glimpse into the motives and struggles of the individual prisoners who refuse to surrender to the State which is attempting to crush them.
Shorn of worldly honours and bereft of any social status, and squeezing the most benefit from the most meagre resources jailhouse lawyers are a new breed of legal gladiators. They are an increasing force in changing the penal landscape of the nation that incarcerates more people than any other.
Mumia and the American experience illuminate what is possible for jailhouse lawyers in Britain, who are also turning to the law to defend themselves against the increasingly oppressive security paradigm.
They do so knowing the personal risks and with little support, least of all from groups which dress themselves in the clothing of prison reform, accept honours and silver; and are enamoured with gracing the courtyards of power and publicity.
Jailhouse lawyers foment hope for change, which everywhere rests in the hands of prisoners. — Ben Gunn, jailhouse lawyer, in prison for 30 years
Jailhouse Lawyers is a must read for prisoners generally, and jailhouse lawyers in particular. Prison reform groups should also take the time to read it, as should any lawyer engaged in criminal and prison law. I still recall receiving a letter from a mother who said the courts refused her son’s appeal. My advice led to a second appeal, and his conviction for murdering a police sergeant was quashed. The government may cut legal aid to prevent qualified lawyers from representing prisoners. But nothing will stop jailhouse lawyers taking on other prisoners’ cases for free. — John Hirst, former jailhouse lawyer
This book tells of a courageous struggle for individual and collective justice and continues in the grand tradition of prison writing, the call from the cell to all of us outside to question everything about the criminal justice system, here and in the United States. — Frances Crook, Howard League for Penal Reform
Sometimes when I have lost a case I tell a client that ‘they cannot imprison your mind.’ -- easy for a lawyer to say, but incredibly difficult to live it in a degrading penal institution. Mumia Abu-Jamal’s mind and spirit have remained free through nearly thirty years of unjust imprisonment. In this book he writes of the achievement of men and women who through their legal ingenuity have transformed the lives of thousands. All this in the context of a brilliant analysis of the nature of law and the role of lawyers as instruments of injustice in the United States. Human rights lawyers everywhere can learn from this book. — Lord Anthony Gifford QC, UK Barrister and Jamaican Attorney
The first importance of Jailhouse Lawyers is that it records, reviews and analyses the extremely important creative, innovative political work that has been ongoing for many years in the United States, but which had never been documented before.
It is a merciless critique of the shortcomings of traditional lawyers. It can now become an international learning tool of particular importance in the Caribbean. — Richard Small, civil rights attorney, Jamaica
Jailhouse Lawyers is a must-read for everyone connected in any fashion to the criminal justice system. The book explores the ongoing legal attack by underground lawyers on an unfair legal system. — Tony Serra, US civil rights attorney
They just cannot stop Mumia. He is passionate and relentless, intellectual and revolutionary. This brother is a champion of law in an institution that is lawless. He has written another book that shall go down in history.
We don’t have the death penalty in Britain but we do have prisoners whose lives are stolen. This book should be distributed throughout the prisons. — Benjamin Zephaniah, ex-prisoner, poet
These lives of resistance and what they accomplish inside are absent from almost every account of prisons, official and unofficial. Who would know that in Yarl’s Wood Removal Centre, a prison in all but name, African women who have survived rape and genocide are organising legal training and submitting judicial reviews to stop deportations?
Most prison reformers don’t seem to have noticed, and certainly haven’t taken their lead from, this prison reform movement. Spelling out what prisoners make happen undermines the cult of professionalism and the mystique of the superior professional mind.
This book fortifies those of us in Europe against any future calls for the death penalty to be reinstated by telling the truth about death row and its distinguished inhabitants. — Legal Action for Women
US prisoners serving a sentence of life without the possibility of parole have no right to legal aid to challenge his conviction. More often than not, he must rely on a ‘jailhouse lawyer’, a fellow prisoner. Jailhouse Lawyers tells us the stories of these gallant prisoners who do battle with the authorities, challenging the abuse of their peers, often provoking recriminations from the guards they sue. This book helps to highlight the truth. — Clive Stafford Smith, Founder of Reprieve
Mumia is a dramatic example of how the criminal justice system can be brought to bear on someone who is African American, articulate, and involved in change in society. The system is threatened by someone like Mumia. A voice as strong and as truthful as his—the repression against him is intensified. — Sister Helen Prejean, author Dead Man Walking
Mumia Abu-Jamal's 28 years on death row for a murder he did not commit would have turned almost anyone else into an embittered, defeated man. Instead, he has remained what he always was, "the voice of the voiceless," Jailhouse Lawyers opens a tightly shut door into the operations of the U.S. penal system by chronicling the exploits of dozens of jailhouse lawyers – both men and women. Their story is a story never before told. — J. Patrick O'Connor, author of “The framing of Mumia Abu-Jamal”
Abu-Jamal reminds the reader of the more than two million Americans behind bars in similar situations to himself, and that those in the free world have a responsibility to those trapped 'in the bowels of the slave ship, in the hidden dank dungeons of America.' — Jaisal Noor, The Indypendent
The first of its kind, Mumia has written a book that is revolutionary because it breaks new ground, enlightening us about the courageous, unorthodox resistance to the system (and its inherent injustices) posed by jailhouse lawyers. — Kiilu Nyasha, ZNet
Mumia Abu-Jamal has once more enlightened us, he has once more offered us new ways of thinking about law, democracy, and power. He allows us to reflect upon the fact that transformational possibilities often emerge where we least expect them. — Angela Y. Davis, from the Foreword
Jailhouse Lawyers enables the public to glimpse a crucial aspect of the growing movement against the prison-industrial complex hidden by high walls and steel doors, one which Mumia knows inside out.
Mumia uncovers what extraordinary lives of resistance some prisoners have created from need, imagination, and determination. Drawing on his experience, compassion, and extensive correspondence, he sketches portraits of great jailhouse lawyers focussed on beating justice out of the system. Often spurred by the need to repair the damage to their own cases inflicted by lazy and uncaring “street lawyers,” Mumia describes how jailhouse lawyers learn the law, the precedents, the jargon, and mount an often formidable legal defense. In the process they carve out a life for themselves, a victory in itself. — Selma James, from the Introduction to the UK Edition
For more information contact: Crossroads Books booksvideos@crossroadswomen.net, Tel: 020 7428 2496
JAILHOUSE LAWYERS:
PRISONERS DEFENDING PRISONERS V THE USA
“This is the story of law learned, not in the ivory towers of multi-billion-dollar endowed universities [but] in the bowels of the slave-ship, in the hidden, dank dungeons of America – the Prisonhouse of Nations.
“It is law learned in a stew of bitterness, under the constant threat of violence, in places where millions of people live, but millions of others wish to ignore or forget.
“It is law written with stubs of pencils, or with four-inch-long rubberized flex-pens, with grit, glimmerings of brilliance, and with clear knowledge that retaliation is right outside the cell door.
“It is a different perspective on the law, written from the bottom, with a faint hope that a right may be wronged, an injustice redressed.
“It is Hard Law.”
Foreword by Angela Y. Davis
Introduction to UK edition by
Selma James
To be published July 2010
by Crossroads Books £9.99.
An outstanding book — Ian Macdonald QC
Make way for inside voices. Everybody should read it — Flo Krause, barrister
A champion of law in an institution that is lawless. This book should be distributed throughout the prisons — Benjamin Zephaniah, poet, ex-prisoner
Mumia & the American experience illuminate what is possible for jailhouse lawyers in Britain — Ben Gunn, jailhouse lawyer
A must read for prisoners and prison reform groups — John Hirst, former jailhouse lawyer
In the grand tradition of prison writing — Frances Crook, Howard League for Penal Reform
Stories of gallant prisoners who do battle with the authorities, challenging the abuse of their peers — Clive Stafford Smith, Founder of Reprieve
A merciless critique of traditional lawyers. An international learning tool — Richard Small, Attorney, Jamaica
A brilliant analysis of the nature of law and the role of lawyers as instruments of injustice — Lord Anthony Gifford QC, UK Barrister and Attorney, Jamaica
Tells the truth about death row and its distinguished inhabitants — Legal Action for Women
The criminal justice system brought to bear on someone who is African American, articulate, and involved in change — Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking
A story never before told — J. Patrick O'Connor, author of The framing of Mumia Abu-Jamal
Mumia Abu-Jamal has once more offered us new ways of thinking about law, democracy, and power — Angela Y. Davis, from the Foreword
A crucial aspect of the growing movement against the prison-industrial complex — Selma James, from the Introduction to the UK Edition
Mumia Abu-Jamal, award winning journalist and former Black Panther, was convicted in 1982 of killing a policeman in a trial drenched in racism. He has spent most of his 28 years in prison on Pennsylvania’s death row. In 2008, a crucial appeal on the grounds of racism in jury selection was rejected. In January 2010 progress on his case was again blocked by the Supreme Court which sent a decision on the death penalty back to the lower courts. People all over the world have campaigned for his conviction to be overturned.
Mumia – as millions know him -- presents the moving struggles and reflections of fellow prisoners who, denied justice, have taken the legal process into their own hands. Jailhouse lawyers represent themselves and others inside, sometimes winning -- even in some cases winning their freedom -- but always resisting, learning, inspiring others to win.
Mumia’s latest book, his sixth, is perhaps his most important. The prison population in the US has exploded so that now one in every 99 people in the United States, and one in every nine Black men between the ages of twenty and 34, is in prison. The movement against prisons and against the death penalty has also grown. Jailhouse Lawyers prises open the clanging steel doors to reveal the hidden power of the anti-prison movement: individual women and men inside, using the law as their weapon.
Praise for Jailhouse Lawyers:
Make way for inside voices, make way for jailhouse lawyers. Even those of us who have daily contact with prisoners and prisons will never understand the full extent of the dehumanising process that takes place behind those walls. The daily abuses of power. The daily humiliations. The powerlessness to make one's voice heard and believed. This book brings us closer to this understanding. Everybody should read it. — Flo Krause, barrister working with UK jailhouse lawyers
“When you find someone who, like Mumia, makes it his business to learn the law and put their finger on the often blatant dishonesty and bias of the courts and judges, then you have an outstanding text book. This is such a book. — Ian Macdonald QC
Jailhouse Lawyers is not a collection of legal anecdotes, a compendium of courtroom gloating, but a rare glimpse into the motives and struggles of the individual prisoners who refuse to surrender to the State which is attempting to crush them.
Shorn of worldly honours and bereft of any social status, and squeezing the most benefit from the most meagre resources jailhouse lawyers are a new breed of legal gladiators. They are an increasing force in changing the penal landscape of the nation that incarcerates more people than any other.
Mumia and the American experience illuminate what is possible for jailhouse lawyers in Britain, who are also turning to the law to defend themselves against the increasingly oppressive security paradigm.
They do so knowing the personal risks and with little support, least of all from groups which dress themselves in the clothing of prison reform, accept honours and silver; and are enamoured with gracing the courtyards of power and publicity.
Jailhouse lawyers foment hope for change, which everywhere rests in the hands of prisoners. — Ben Gunn, jailhouse lawyer, in prison for 30 years
Jailhouse Lawyers is a must read for prisoners generally, and jailhouse lawyers in particular. Prison reform groups should also take the time to read it, as should any lawyer engaged in criminal and prison law. I still recall receiving a letter from a mother who said the courts refused her son’s appeal. My advice led to a second appeal, and his conviction for murdering a police sergeant was quashed. The government may cut legal aid to prevent qualified lawyers from representing prisoners. But nothing will stop jailhouse lawyers taking on other prisoners’ cases for free. — John Hirst, former jailhouse lawyer
This book tells of a courageous struggle for individual and collective justice and continues in the grand tradition of prison writing, the call from the cell to all of us outside to question everything about the criminal justice system, here and in the United States. — Frances Crook, Howard League for Penal Reform
Sometimes when I have lost a case I tell a client that ‘they cannot imprison your mind.’ -- easy for a lawyer to say, but incredibly difficult to live it in a degrading penal institution. Mumia Abu-Jamal’s mind and spirit have remained free through nearly thirty years of unjust imprisonment. In this book he writes of the achievement of men and women who through their legal ingenuity have transformed the lives of thousands. All this in the context of a brilliant analysis of the nature of law and the role of lawyers as instruments of injustice in the United States. Human rights lawyers everywhere can learn from this book. — Lord Anthony Gifford QC, UK Barrister and Jamaican Attorney
The first importance of Jailhouse Lawyers is that it records, reviews and analyses the extremely important creative, innovative political work that has been ongoing for many years in the United States, but which had never been documented before.
It is a merciless critique of the shortcomings of traditional lawyers. It can now become an international learning tool of particular importance in the Caribbean. — Richard Small, civil rights attorney, Jamaica
Jailhouse Lawyers is a must-read for everyone connected in any fashion to the criminal justice system. The book explores the ongoing legal attack by underground lawyers on an unfair legal system. — Tony Serra, US civil rights attorney
They just cannot stop Mumia. He is passionate and relentless, intellectual and revolutionary. This brother is a champion of law in an institution that is lawless. He has written another book that shall go down in history.
We don’t have the death penalty in Britain but we do have prisoners whose lives are stolen. This book should be distributed throughout the prisons. — Benjamin Zephaniah, ex-prisoner, poet
These lives of resistance and what they accomplish inside are absent from almost every account of prisons, official and unofficial. Who would know that in Yarl’s Wood Removal Centre, a prison in all but name, African women who have survived rape and genocide are organising legal training and submitting judicial reviews to stop deportations?
Most prison reformers don’t seem to have noticed, and certainly haven’t taken their lead from, this prison reform movement. Spelling out what prisoners make happen undermines the cult of professionalism and the mystique of the superior professional mind.
This book fortifies those of us in Europe against any future calls for the death penalty to be reinstated by telling the truth about death row and its distinguished inhabitants. — Legal Action for Women
US prisoners serving a sentence of life without the possibility of parole have no right to legal aid to challenge his conviction. More often than not, he must rely on a ‘jailhouse lawyer’, a fellow prisoner. Jailhouse Lawyers tells us the stories of these gallant prisoners who do battle with the authorities, challenging the abuse of their peers, often provoking recriminations from the guards they sue. This book helps to highlight the truth. — Clive Stafford Smith, Founder of Reprieve
Mumia is a dramatic example of how the criminal justice system can be brought to bear on someone who is African American, articulate, and involved in change in society. The system is threatened by someone like Mumia. A voice as strong and as truthful as his—the repression against him is intensified. — Sister Helen Prejean, author Dead Man Walking
Mumia Abu-Jamal's 28 years on death row for a murder he did not commit would have turned almost anyone else into an embittered, defeated man. Instead, he has remained what he always was, "the voice of the voiceless," Jailhouse Lawyers opens a tightly shut door into the operations of the U.S. penal system by chronicling the exploits of dozens of jailhouse lawyers – both men and women. Their story is a story never before told. — J. Patrick O'Connor, author of “The framing of Mumia Abu-Jamal”
Abu-Jamal reminds the reader of the more than two million Americans behind bars in similar situations to himself, and that those in the free world have a responsibility to those trapped 'in the bowels of the slave ship, in the hidden dank dungeons of America.' — Jaisal Noor, The Indypendent
The first of its kind, Mumia has written a book that is revolutionary because it breaks new ground, enlightening us about the courageous, unorthodox resistance to the system (and its inherent injustices) posed by jailhouse lawyers. — Kiilu Nyasha, ZNet
Mumia Abu-Jamal has once more enlightened us, he has once more offered us new ways of thinking about law, democracy, and power. He allows us to reflect upon the fact that transformational possibilities often emerge where we least expect them. — Angela Y. Davis, from the Foreword
Jailhouse Lawyers enables the public to glimpse a crucial aspect of the growing movement against the prison-industrial complex hidden by high walls and steel doors, one which Mumia knows inside out.
Mumia uncovers what extraordinary lives of resistance some prisoners have created from need, imagination, and determination. Drawing on his experience, compassion, and extensive correspondence, he sketches portraits of great jailhouse lawyers focussed on beating justice out of the system. Often spurred by the need to repair the damage to their own cases inflicted by lazy and uncaring “street lawyers,” Mumia describes how jailhouse lawyers learn the law, the precedents, the jargon, and mount an often formidable legal defense. In the process they carve out a life for themselves, a victory in itself. — Selma James, from the Introduction to the UK Edition
For more information contact: Crossroads Books booksvideos@crossroadswomen.net, Tel: 020 7428 2496
Tom Harris Labour MP declares support for torturer
Tom Harris Labour MP declares support for torturer
Tweet
TomHarrisMP
Very proud to have nominated @DMiliband for leader of the Labour Party 30 minutes ago via TweetDeck
Jailhouselawyer
@TomHarrisMP So, you are proud to support someone who supports torture? 20 minutes ago via web
David Miliband supports torture.
Tweet
TomHarrisMP
Very proud to have nominated @DMiliband for leader of the Labour Party 30 minutes ago via TweetDeck
Jailhouselawyer
@TomHarrisMP So, you are proud to support someone who supports torture? 20 minutes ago via web
David Miliband supports torture.
Monday, May 24, 2010
Iain Dale jumping on the banner wagon!
Iain Dale jumping on the banner wagon!
A COP takes down a banner from a statue of Winston Churchill yesterday - FOUR HOURS after police were asked to remove it.
Sorry to bore you with this...
An Open Letter to Boris Johnson
Iain Dale 3:30 PM
Iain Dale can huff and puff, with his Queen-like "we are not amused" hissy fit. The camp Iain Dale is complaining about another camp!
Nowt as queer as folk!
A COP takes down a banner from a statue of Winston Churchill yesterday - FOUR HOURS after police were asked to remove it.
Sorry to bore you with this...
An Open Letter to Boris Johnson
Iain Dale 3:30 PM
Iain Dale can huff and puff, with his Queen-like "we are not amused" hissy fit. The camp Iain Dale is complaining about another camp!
Nowt as queer as folk!
Prisoners Votes Case: It's just not cricket...
Prisoners Votes Case: It's just not cricket...
Long Grass with Butterflies 1890, Vincent van Gogh
A picture paints a thousand words...
Idiom: Kick something into the long grass
Idiom Definitions for 'Kick something into the long grass'
If an issue or problem is kicked into the long grass, it is pushed aside and hidden in the hope that it will be forgotten or ignored.
Keeping to the same theme...
"The Long Grass is the area of the cricket field where things get lost. It doesn't mean they disappear, its just sometimes people give up looking. And if experience shows anything, if you don't try for fear that someone will tell you you're wrong, then you will never have the satisfaction of being getting something right. Sometimes people seem to be looking in the wrong place".
But ministers will discover the issue cannot be left in the long grass.
And another example...
"The government is desperately trying to kick this issue into the long grass because it's more worried about the politics of giving prisoners the vote before the next general election."
Is the day of reckoning 1 June 2010 at the Council of Europe, Committee of Ministers human rights meeting?
Unlock and Democracy...
In 2004 the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the UK’s blanket ban on prisoners’ voting is unlawful. Since then the government has failed to implement the ruling by dragging its heels through a protracted two-stage consultation process making it clear that it does not support the notion of prisoners being enfranchised. It is apparent that, as with any issue whereby prisoners are perceived to benefit from government intervention, the government wishes to avoid enacting the necessary legislation which would be attributable to its tenure. Rather it would prefer to kick the matter into the long grass and escape the negative media attention it fears would reduce its chances of re-election.
Cricket at Lords...
Have the Government taken into account that their timid prevarication will lead to costs to the taxpayer if prisoners take cases to Strasbourg for this gross violation of a binding judgment and then we have to pay the costs of all these legal proceedings? Was that taken into account when the Government decided to kick this into the long grass?
Long Grass with Butterflies 1890, Vincent van Gogh
A picture paints a thousand words...
Idiom: Kick something into the long grass
Idiom Definitions for 'Kick something into the long grass'
If an issue or problem is kicked into the long grass, it is pushed aside and hidden in the hope that it will be forgotten or ignored.
Keeping to the same theme...
"The Long Grass is the area of the cricket field where things get lost. It doesn't mean they disappear, its just sometimes people give up looking. And if experience shows anything, if you don't try for fear that someone will tell you you're wrong, then you will never have the satisfaction of being getting something right. Sometimes people seem to be looking in the wrong place".
But ministers will discover the issue cannot be left in the long grass.
And another example...
"The government is desperately trying to kick this issue into the long grass because it's more worried about the politics of giving prisoners the vote before the next general election."
Is the day of reckoning 1 June 2010 at the Council of Europe, Committee of Ministers human rights meeting?
Unlock and Democracy...
In 2004 the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the UK’s blanket ban on prisoners’ voting is unlawful. Since then the government has failed to implement the ruling by dragging its heels through a protracted two-stage consultation process making it clear that it does not support the notion of prisoners being enfranchised. It is apparent that, as with any issue whereby prisoners are perceived to benefit from government intervention, the government wishes to avoid enacting the necessary legislation which would be attributable to its tenure. Rather it would prefer to kick the matter into the long grass and escape the negative media attention it fears would reduce its chances of re-election.
Cricket at Lords...
Have the Government taken into account that their timid prevarication will lead to costs to the taxpayer if prisoners take cases to Strasbourg for this gross violation of a binding judgment and then we have to pay the costs of all these legal proceedings? Was that taken into account when the Government decided to kick this into the long grass?
WTF: 'Doctors and nurses' is now a crime!
WTF: 'Doctors and nurses' is now a crime!
Two boys become youngest convicted of attempted rape
Two boys aged 10 and 11 have been found guilty of the attempted rape of an eight-year-old girl, becoming the youngest ever convicted of the offence.
"The case has raised questions over the treatment of children in the court system".
"Sadly, we still have a way to go to make sure courts work in the best way for children - both defendants and witnesses - who will be frightened and need support all the way through the judicial process if they are going to give their best evidence."
Instead of adapting the courts for children, children should not be put through the CJS!
Was this really attempted rape – or children playing?
Two boys become youngest convicted of attempted rape
Two boys aged 10 and 11 have been found guilty of the attempted rape of an eight-year-old girl, becoming the youngest ever convicted of the offence.
"The case has raised questions over the treatment of children in the court system".
"Sadly, we still have a way to go to make sure courts work in the best way for children - both defendants and witnesses - who will be frightened and need support all the way through the judicial process if they are going to give their best evidence."
Instead of adapting the courts for children, children should not be put through the CJS!
Was this really attempted rape – or children playing?
Carry on Teacher
Carry on Teacher
Dumbbell attack teacher given community order
A teacher who attacked a 14-year-old pupil with a dumbbell has been given a two-year community order.
It appears as though the Establishment has rallied around and protected the teacher.
Dumbbell attack teacher given community order
A teacher who attacked a 14-year-old pupil with a dumbbell has been given a two-year community order.
It appears as though the Establishment has rallied around and protected the teacher.
Sunday, May 23, 2010
As the euro fails, Brussels turns on us to save itself
As the euro fails, Brussels turns on us to save itself
The eurozone crisis and the ambitions of the European Commission will cost us dear, says Daniel Hannan.
Politicians sometimes use the word "crisis" vaguely. Crisis is, appropriately, a Greek word. It means a moment of decision, a crossroads.
The EU faces now a crisis in the most exact sense. There are two ways in which it can treat the economic cancer that has taken hold in Greece, and which now threatens to metastasise across the Mediterranean. One is through amputation. Greece could be allowed to leave the euro and devalue, thereby pricing itself into the market and winning time to carry through economic reforms.
Another version of amputation, runs the rumour in Brussels, would be for Germany and its neighbours to create a new, hard currency among themselves, bequeathing the legal carcase of EMU to southern Europe. The effect would be the same: Greece and the other Club Med states would benefit from an immediate economic stimulus, and northern taxpayers would be excused having to fund a bail-out.
Most Eurocrats, however, regard amputation as a final resort. Instead, they prescribe a lengthy, debilitating and uncertain course of chemotherapy. The 16 members of the eurozone are putting up vast sums in what are euphemistically called loans, though few expect them to be repaid. German taxpayers, who were assured when the euro was launched that such aid would be illegal, are understandably furious.
Even angrier are the people of Ireland. Unlike Greece, Ireland has tightened its collective belt, with everyone from the Taoiseach to welfare recipients taking cuts. Irish voters now learn that, had they been less self-denying, they might have qualified for a bail-out of their own. Worse, they find themselves, as eurozone members, having to join the rescue consortium. At a time when their public-sector workers face pay reductions of between 5 and 20 per cent, the Irish must borrow an extra 800 million euros to send to Greece.
EU leaders know that they won't get away with this again. It will be politically impossible to ask the voters of Germany, Ireland or anywhere else to fork out for a second rescue package. So they are devising a mechanism where such fiscal transfers will happen automatically. On Friday, the European President, Herman Van Rompuy, will chair a meeting of EU finance ministers aimed at establishing what he calls "European economic governance".
Part of this governance involves creating a reserve account: a European Debt Agency, or European Monetary Fund. Part involves the harmonisation of financial supervision: a process especially damaging to Britain, and one which began last week with the almost unanimous approval of a new scheme to regulate investment funds, which are overwhelmingly based here.
Above all, though, Eurocrats want more moolah. Although Brussels has considerable executive, legislative and judicial power, it lacks fiscal clout. The EU budget accounts for 1.24 per cent of Europe's GDP, the US federal government for around 35 per cent of America's. The key ambition of most Euro-enthusiasts is to make themselves financially independent of the national governments through what they call "own resources": that is, money levied directly by Brussels. Own resources already exist, in that the EU automatically receives a component of VAT revenue from its member states, but almost every Euro-integrationist regards the amount as insufficient.
How to get the money? Some federalists dream of a pan-European income tax, to be levied by MEPs: the policy of, for example, the European People's Party. Other ideas include a levy on emails and a duty on international phone calls. Several member states like the idea of carbon taxes, or other green imposts.
In the present mood, there is especially strong support for a tax on financial transactions. Most EU financial transactions, of course, take place in London, which makes the scheme attractive on the Continent. Rather as happened with the Common Fisheries Policy, Britain would find itself disproportionately filling a pot from which others could draw.
Until now, our decision to keep the pound has sheltered us from the worst of the storm. (Isn't it time, by the way, that those who supported euro membership in the 1990s apologise to William Hague? His determination to see the single currency working "in good times and in bad " suddenly seems eerily prescient.) Being outside the eurozone, however, won't shield us from the negative consequences of Mr Van Rompuy's economic governance. EU supervision of financial services, a larger Brussels budget, a Europe-wide tax on banking transactions: these things will fall more heavily on Britain than on the states that abandoned their currencies.
What we are seeing, 11 years after the launch of the euro, is a vindication of what opponents of the single currency – and, indeed, its more honest supporters – argued all along, namely that you can't have monetary union without political union. If a state can't accommodate an economic shock in its interest rate or exchange rate, it will need to be bailed out. Common taxes mean common government – or, as Romano Prodi, the former head of the European Commission, put it last week, "fiscal federalism".
The EU has a way of thrusting itself uninvited into our affairs. Most ministers would gladly do without the distraction, but the ambitions of Brussels directly threaten the coalition's newly agreed domestic programme. Last week, for example, Nick Clegg spoke about the need to diffuse and democratise power in Britain, starting with a Great Repeal Bill. I cheered him lustily, having proposed precisely these things two years ago. The trouble is that his agenda will run up against the brute fact of the supremacy of EU law.
You can't decentralise power in the UK while centralising it in the EU. You can't object to the quango state while submitting to the biggest quango of the lot, namely the unelected European Commission. You can't ask for across-the-board budget savings while increasing our net contributions to Brussels by 60 per cent. You can't strengthen parliamentary control over the executive when orders-in-council simply implement EU rulings. You can't, in conscience, give people a referendum on how to elect their MPs while denying them a referendum on whether those MPs are sovereign.
When the Lisbon Treaty was adopted, many thought that the EU would try to digest it before consuming additional powers. But the crisis in Greece has whetted its hunger anew. Satisfying that appetite will be expensive for all of us.
Daniel Hannan is a Conservative MEP and writes every day at blogs.telegraph.co.uk
The eurozone crisis and the ambitions of the European Commission will cost us dear, says Daniel Hannan.
Politicians sometimes use the word "crisis" vaguely. Crisis is, appropriately, a Greek word. It means a moment of decision, a crossroads.
The EU faces now a crisis in the most exact sense. There are two ways in which it can treat the economic cancer that has taken hold in Greece, and which now threatens to metastasise across the Mediterranean. One is through amputation. Greece could be allowed to leave the euro and devalue, thereby pricing itself into the market and winning time to carry through economic reforms.
Another version of amputation, runs the rumour in Brussels, would be for Germany and its neighbours to create a new, hard currency among themselves, bequeathing the legal carcase of EMU to southern Europe. The effect would be the same: Greece and the other Club Med states would benefit from an immediate economic stimulus, and northern taxpayers would be excused having to fund a bail-out.
Most Eurocrats, however, regard amputation as a final resort. Instead, they prescribe a lengthy, debilitating and uncertain course of chemotherapy. The 16 members of the eurozone are putting up vast sums in what are euphemistically called loans, though few expect them to be repaid. German taxpayers, who were assured when the euro was launched that such aid would be illegal, are understandably furious.
Even angrier are the people of Ireland. Unlike Greece, Ireland has tightened its collective belt, with everyone from the Taoiseach to welfare recipients taking cuts. Irish voters now learn that, had they been less self-denying, they might have qualified for a bail-out of their own. Worse, they find themselves, as eurozone members, having to join the rescue consortium. At a time when their public-sector workers face pay reductions of between 5 and 20 per cent, the Irish must borrow an extra 800 million euros to send to Greece.
EU leaders know that they won't get away with this again. It will be politically impossible to ask the voters of Germany, Ireland or anywhere else to fork out for a second rescue package. So they are devising a mechanism where such fiscal transfers will happen automatically. On Friday, the European President, Herman Van Rompuy, will chair a meeting of EU finance ministers aimed at establishing what he calls "European economic governance".
Part of this governance involves creating a reserve account: a European Debt Agency, or European Monetary Fund. Part involves the harmonisation of financial supervision: a process especially damaging to Britain, and one which began last week with the almost unanimous approval of a new scheme to regulate investment funds, which are overwhelmingly based here.
Above all, though, Eurocrats want more moolah. Although Brussels has considerable executive, legislative and judicial power, it lacks fiscal clout. The EU budget accounts for 1.24 per cent of Europe's GDP, the US federal government for around 35 per cent of America's. The key ambition of most Euro-enthusiasts is to make themselves financially independent of the national governments through what they call "own resources": that is, money levied directly by Brussels. Own resources already exist, in that the EU automatically receives a component of VAT revenue from its member states, but almost every Euro-integrationist regards the amount as insufficient.
How to get the money? Some federalists dream of a pan-European income tax, to be levied by MEPs: the policy of, for example, the European People's Party. Other ideas include a levy on emails and a duty on international phone calls. Several member states like the idea of carbon taxes, or other green imposts.
In the present mood, there is especially strong support for a tax on financial transactions. Most EU financial transactions, of course, take place in London, which makes the scheme attractive on the Continent. Rather as happened with the Common Fisheries Policy, Britain would find itself disproportionately filling a pot from which others could draw.
Until now, our decision to keep the pound has sheltered us from the worst of the storm. (Isn't it time, by the way, that those who supported euro membership in the 1990s apologise to William Hague? His determination to see the single currency working "in good times and in bad " suddenly seems eerily prescient.) Being outside the eurozone, however, won't shield us from the negative consequences of Mr Van Rompuy's economic governance. EU supervision of financial services, a larger Brussels budget, a Europe-wide tax on banking transactions: these things will fall more heavily on Britain than on the states that abandoned their currencies.
What we are seeing, 11 years after the launch of the euro, is a vindication of what opponents of the single currency – and, indeed, its more honest supporters – argued all along, namely that you can't have monetary union without political union. If a state can't accommodate an economic shock in its interest rate or exchange rate, it will need to be bailed out. Common taxes mean common government – or, as Romano Prodi, the former head of the European Commission, put it last week, "fiscal federalism".
The EU has a way of thrusting itself uninvited into our affairs. Most ministers would gladly do without the distraction, but the ambitions of Brussels directly threaten the coalition's newly agreed domestic programme. Last week, for example, Nick Clegg spoke about the need to diffuse and democratise power in Britain, starting with a Great Repeal Bill. I cheered him lustily, having proposed precisely these things two years ago. The trouble is that his agenda will run up against the brute fact of the supremacy of EU law.
You can't decentralise power in the UK while centralising it in the EU. You can't object to the quango state while submitting to the biggest quango of the lot, namely the unelected European Commission. You can't ask for across-the-board budget savings while increasing our net contributions to Brussels by 60 per cent. You can't strengthen parliamentary control over the executive when orders-in-council simply implement EU rulings. You can't, in conscience, give people a referendum on how to elect their MPs while denying them a referendum on whether those MPs are sovereign.
When the Lisbon Treaty was adopted, many thought that the EU would try to digest it before consuming additional powers. But the crisis in Greece has whetted its hunger anew. Satisfying that appetite will be expensive for all of us.
Daniel Hannan is a Conservative MEP and writes every day at blogs.telegraph.co.uk