Blunkett Is Gone, but Belmarsh Remaining By Linda Heard

Blunkett Is Gone, But Belmarsh Remaining

By Linda Heard

Arab News, CAIRO, 21 December 2004 —

Britain may be headed for a constitutional crisis, as the country’s law lords and top barristers line up against the government over the injustices of holding foreign asylum seekers suspected of links to terrorist groups, without charge or trial.

The system responsible for the incarceration of 11 such individuals — who all happen to be Arabs — for three years is the legacy of the most authoritarian home secretary Britain has ever had, David Blunkett, who last week resigned his post over a scandal surrounding his fast-tracking of a visa for his former married lover’s Filipino nanny.

Blunkett’s exit may have been uncomfortable for Prime Minister tony Blair, who viewed him as the lynchpin of a scheme to introduce mandatory biometric identity cards, but human rights advocates could hardly contain their glee at his downfall.

Not content with detaining foreign suspects and depriving them of their rights, Blunkett had intended extending his powers to include British citizens, planned to set up non-jury trials and was anxious to lower the burden of proof for terrorist offenses.

Against every human rights ethos, Blunkett had fought to use evidence gleaned from torture.

On the very day that Blunkett made his tearful farewells from his best buddy Tony Blair, eight out of nine British law lords smashed the anvil of Blunkett’s anti-terrorist strategy by voting that legislation passed during the aftermath of Sept. 11 was incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights.

Lord Nicholls explained his decision by saying: “Indefinite imprisonment without charge or trial is anathema in any country which observes the rule of law. It deprives the detained person of the protection a criminal trial is intended to afford.” His colleague Lord Hoffman said: “The real threat to the life of the nation...comes not from terrorism but from laws such as these”, while Lord Scott described indefinite imprisonment on grounds not disclosed as “the stuff of nightmares”.

If this was a Hollywood movie, Blunkett’s successor Charles Clarke, considered by many as a liberal, would have driven off to the gates of Belmarsh and thrown open the doors in the face of such vehement criticism from such eminent legal minds. However, that was not to be.

Instead, Clarke issued a statement saying he had no intention of releasing the detainees any time soon but did say the anti-terrorism laws would be appropriately tweaked when Parliament returns from its recess.

This is generally thought to mean the law may be changed to allow evidence from wire-tapping and other suspect evidence-gathering methods into the courts, thus facilitating the Belmarsh detainees being brought to trial.

Britain’s Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, instead of being apologetic, came out swinging against the law lord’s judgment, saying it was “simply wrong” to suggest the men were being held on the home secretary’s whim. Further, he stressed it should be Parliament and not a panel of judges, which should decide whether or not terrorist suspects should be released. This is where Straw and I definitely part company.

The Belmarsh eleven were being held according to a renewable certificate issued by the home secretary at his personal discretion. Parliament had little to do with individual cases. The problem here is should one man be given so much power, the power to remove individuals out of the judicial system, dump them in jail and virtually throw away the key?

Before Blunkett was driven out of office by an unforgiving media, his personal behavior was being attacked as unstable by some of his colleagues. The cracks in his impassive exterior began to show when he went on a radio station waxing lyrical about his unfortunate love life.

His recently published biography left no doubt in the minds of his fellow-Cabinet members of the vindictiveness of the poor-boy-made-good home secretary when they found themselves at the receiving end of his unvarnished criticisms and petty jibes.

When he gate-crashed a seasonal bash for Labour Party backbenchers, grabbed the chair reserved for the deputy prime minister, and then got up to warble a party piece, the parliamentarian revelers squirmed, including Bob Marshall-Andrews MP, who later described the home secretary’s behavior as “quite seriously unbalanced”.

Since retiring to lick his wounds, he is apparently going around telling his closest friends that he is victim of a plot by American millionaires to bring down a working class boy. Now, I ask you.

Is this the type of person who should hold the fate of others solely in his hands? I had my own suspicions when upon hearing of the suicide while under his care of serial killer Dr. Harold Shipman, Blunkett said he was tempted to celebrate “with a bottle of bubbly”.

Now the row between the lawyers and the Blair government has heated up with David Pannick QC, one of the country’s most prominent barristers, warning that unless the new home secretary acts quickly upon the ruling of the law lords, Britain could be hauled off to the European Court of Human Rights. If that were to happen, the court is likely to come firmly down on the side of the detainees when Britain would be forced to abide by its decision.

On Monday, the government suffered another embarrassment with the resignation of Ian MacDonald, a ministerial-appointed advocate of detainees before the Special Immigration Appeals Commission. He has described the law allowing the indefinite detention of foreigners as “an odious blot on our legal landscape”, and “contrary to our deepest notions of justice”.

Many of the detainees, most of them held on the flimsiest of pretexts, such as a pair of boots sent by one to Chechans, are in deep depression. Several have attempted suicide or gone on hunger strike.

One, who is a double amputee, is locked up in Britain’s infamous mental institution Broadmoor. Another, confined to a wheelchair, was transferred out of Belmarsh by the Special Immigration Appeals Commission and, instead, subjected to house arrest due to his complete mental breakdown.

Blunkett, not known for his compassion, referred to commission members as “bonkers” (crazy). Many in Britain are today wondering the same about him, a notion which extends to the prime minister’s wisdom in keeping him around for as long as he did.

— Linda S. Heard is a specialist writer on Middle East affairs. She welcomes feedback. solitairemedia@yahoo.co.uk

Earth, a planet hungry for peace

Apartheid Wall


The Israeli Land-Grab Apartheid Wall built inside the Palestinian territories, here separating Abu Dis from occupied East Jerusalem. (IPC, 7/4/04).

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank, like a Python. (Alquds,10/25/03).

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