Category Archives: Legal

Britain, Government, Legal, Politics

An inquiry is needed into torture

RENDITION & TORTURE

Former cabinet minister David Davis is pressing the Prime Minister to order a judge-led inquiry into Britain’s involvement in the mistreatment of terror suspects – or face the prospect of a legal challenge.

In a major intervention, the former Brexit Secretary calls on Theresa May to set up an independent probe to investigate UK complicity in “wicked” torture and rendition during the so-called “war on terror”.

Failing to fulfil the Tory party’s pledge to hold an inquiry, chaired by a senior judge, into the abuse of captives will mean never discovering the truth about some of Britain’s “darkest days”, he says.

Mr Davis has backed a hard-hitting letter to Downing Street on torture signed by senior MPs.

It comes just weeks after he quit the Cabinet in disgust at Mrs May’s Chequers blueprint for leaving the EU.

He claims that Government inaction following confirmation that Tony Blair’s New Labour and the security services colluded with the US’s torture programme after 9/11 also contributed to his decision to walk out.

Mr Davis condemns Mrs May for hindering the search for the truth by preventing British agents from giving crucial evidence to Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC).

He says: “If the Government rejects the cross-party calls then they will open themselves up to being challenged in the courts. That is an outcome none of us wants to see. We have to hope common sense prevails.”

He also says it was “amazing” that Mr Blair and his ministers appeared not to have questioned spy chiefs about their actions, which raised the prospect that they were “deliberately avoiding asking them to maintain deniability”.

The letter, written by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Rendition, argues that a judge-led inquiry is the “only way to get to the bottom of this shameful episode in our recent history and draw a line under it”.

A damning ISC report in June said British spy chiefs tolerated “inexcusable” mistreatment of terror suspects in the years after 9/11. The 152-page dossier, which took three years to compile, laid bare in unprecedented detail the UK’s complicity in torture and “extraordinary rendition”, where suspects are flown to another country for imprisonment and interrogation.

Mrs May said the security and intelligence agencies “regretted” not recognising sooner the “unacceptable practices”. But the Government said only that it would give “careful consideration” to holding a judge-led inquiry and make a decision within 60 days – around August 27.

Former prime minister David Cameron supported such an inquiry and appointed judge Sir Peter Gibson in 2010 but the probe was scrapped in 2012 before completing his work.

A spokesperson for the human rights charity Reprieve said: “The Prime Minister should listen to her colleagues and call an independent judge-led inquiry, to ensure Britain learns from its mistakes.”

MR Davis says any government that permits UK involvement in torture should be held to firmly account. Unfortunately, he declared, this has not happened in cases where UK ministers and officials got mixed up in “war on terror”- era torture.

That is why Theresa May should deliver on the Government’s long-standing commitment to launch an independent judge-led inquiry into these matters. That is the only way we can ensure we don’t become complicit ever again.

The reports revealed Tony Blair’s ministers planned and bankrolled score of illegal kidnap operations and allowed the UK to become involved in hundreds of cases where officials knew of or suspected abuse.

In one incident cited an MI6 officer took part in the questioning of a detainee alongside US personnel before witnessing the man being driven in a “6ft sealed box” to be illegally rendered on an American plane.

The report also details the account of one British agent describing an American “Torture Centre” in Iraq, to which the UK military were no longer allowed to send detainees as a result of what went on there.

In what the ISC report condemns as an unacceptable “workaround”, MI6 simply took detainees held there to an adjacent cabin, where they could be interviewed, before being sent back to their abuse.

In another incident, an MI6 officer was assisting with a US interrogation – until being asked to leave the room, so that the US official could “rough up” the detainee without any witnesses present. When the UK officer returned, the ISC report describes the detainee as visibly hurt.

These revelations, Mr Davis says, represent only the tip of the iceberg, as the Parliamentary committee investigating UK involvement in torture was barred by Downing Street from following critical leads.

Roadblocks thrown up by No 10 meant the ISC was able to question 13 times fewer witnesses than it sought. This led to its chairman, in his own words, to “draw a line” under the committee’s efforts.

This interference by government means that despite the reports’ damning findings there are too many gaps and unanswered questions. The need for a full, independent, judge-led inquiry is clear.

When the Conservatives entered government in 2010, the party rightly promised that it would get to the bottom of Britain’s involvement in these practices, and make whatever changes were needed to stop them happening again. The job has been started, but it remains incomplete. Mr Davis says this is not about blaming individuals who were undoubtedly operating under extreme and highly pressured conditions, but that we will never be able to understand what those on the ground understood their orders to be unless they can be asked.

What were they being told? What information were they feeding back? And what questions were they raising with their supporters?

 

ALSO central to understand is what ministers at the time knew about the operations they were signing off on. Amazingly, it seems that they were not asking questions of the agencies about what was being sanctioned.

Did they fail to do this because they wrongly assumed everything was in order? Or were they deliberately avoiding asking them to maintain deniability?

An inquiry into these issues must be led by someone untainted by a connection to the intelligence services. It is also clear that the chair must have full legal powers to compel the production of evidence.

Measures will, of course, need to put in place to protect genuinely sensitive material, but it is perfectly possible for this to be done while ensuring that relevant testimony is publicly heard.

If the Government rejects the cross-party calls then they will open themselves up to being challenged in the courts.

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Government, Legal, Scotland

Scotland’s EU Continuity Bill now being tested in Supreme Court

SCOTLAND: BREXIT

THE highest court in the UK has been urged to strike down the SNP’s Brexit legislation because it relates to international powers which are not devolved to Holyrood.

A legal battle between the Scottish and UK Governments is underway in the Supreme Court. It could have huge ramifications for Theresa May’s Brexit plans.

The UK’s top law officers argued that the SNP’s Continuity Bill, which has been passed by a majority of MSPs in the Scottish Parliament, “cannot stand” because it is “fundamentally inconsistent” with the law.

But the Scottish Government’s top legal officer insisted that the Bill was “carefully framed” not to cut across EU laws and was modelled on the UK Government’s Withdrawal Bill.

The case was called after the SNP opted to press ahead with its own Brexit legislation following its decision to refuse to give consent to Mrs May’s Bill.

The legislation was fast-tracked through parliament, despite Holyrood’s Presiding Officer Ken Macintosh concluding that it was “not within the legislative competence of the parliament”.

The Supreme Court is considering the issue after UK law officers asked for a judgment. The case is continuing, with a verdict expected in October.

Presenting the UK case, Advocate General for Scotland Lord Richard Keen told the seven judges considering the matter that “the Scottish Bill as a whole cannot stand”.

He told the panel, including Supreme Court president Lady Hale and deputy president Lord Reed, that the Bill “impermissibly modifies the UK Act on withdrawal from the EU” and is “fundamentally inconsistent” with legislation passed by MPs.

He argued that the Continuity Bill was “directly inconsistent with the UK Act at the most basic of levels” and that “the two simply cannot stand together”.

The UK law officers’ written case states: “The Scottish Bill is not law because it relates to the reserved matter of international relations as defined in Section 7 (1) of Schedule 5, and is therefore outside of competence.”

The UK Bill was given Royal Assent on June 26 and became the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018.

The law officers say that the Scottish Bill was passed “without knowledge” of the outcome of negotiations between the UK Government and the EU.

In his written case, Scottish Lord Advocate James Wolffe said: “The purpose of the Scottish Bill is to promote legal certainty by making provision for the continuity within the domestic legal system of existing EU-derived law upon and following withdrawal.”

HOLYROOD’S Brexit Bill is “perfectly practical”, the Lord Advocate told the UK Supreme Court as the Scottish Government continued its unprecedented constitutional battle with Whitehall.

In the second and final day of the court hearing in London, James Wolffe rejected the UK Government’s main contention that, by Passing Edinburgh’s Continuity Bill, the Scottish Parliament was in some way trying to cut across Westminster’s authority in international relations.

He argued that the Scottish bill was not incompatible with EU law, which was based on the principles of “legal certainty and continuity”.

The Lord Advocate said the Holyrood legislation only impacted on the “domestic legal order” and so could not affect the UK’s negotiations with Brussels.

Crucially, Mr Wolffe told the court the Scottish legislation had been passed by MSPs several months before the UK Government’s flagship EU Withdrawal Bill became law, noting: “It was not intended to modify the UK bill and could not do so.”

On the first day of the hearing, Lord Keen of Elie, Advocate General for Scotland, leading for the UK Government, argued that “any reasonable consideration” of the Scottish bill and the UK act showed the former sought to modify, that is undermine, the latter and so the “two simply cannot stand together” as they produced two “dual but inconsistent regimes” in respect of retained EU law.

But the Lord Advocate’s points were supported by Michael Fordham for the Welsh Government, who claimed the UK Government’s contention that the Scottish bill would cut across Whitehall’s reserved powers on international relations was “wrong and incoherent”.

He said the UK’s argument that devolved administrations could not legislate in devolved areas currently managed by the EU because they touched on international treaty negotiations was an “extravagant claim which has very alarming logical implications”.

He explained that this would have the effect of restricting the powers of devolved parliaments even after Brexit and EU law was transferred on to the UK Statute Book.

John Larkin, the Northern Irish Attorney General, also argued that the Scottish bill was “within the legislative competence of the Scottish Parliament”.

But, in response, Lord Keen suggested it was “unjustified” for devolved governments to expect that all devolved powers should be handed over after Britain left the EU because, when the devolution settlement was drawn up 20 years ago, no one could have predicted Brexit.

He said it was “not open to the Scottish Government and the Scottish Parliament to assume that no new legislative constraints” would be introduced because of Britain leaving the EU.

He claimed the Continuity Bill was “fundamentally inconsistent” with the purpose of the UK act and that the confusion over which Parliament had jurisdiction over which European regulations would result in the undermining of the UK Government’s Brexit strategy.

Seven judges of the Supreme Court, including two Scottish judges, will now spend the summer considering their ruling. If they were to find for the Scottish Government, then this would mean the Continuity Bill would receive royal assent and become law.

However, this would mean there would be two competing pieces of legislation on the statute book, which would likely result in the matter returning to the Supreme Court to determine which act took precedence.

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Arts, Books, Legal, Literature, Scotland

Book Review: Conan Doyle For The Defence

SCOTLAND: TRUE CRIME

Fox

Conan Doyle For The Defence by Margalit Fox

Intro: How the creator of Sherlock Holmes unravelled a real murder and deeply troubling miscarriage of justice

ON JANUARY 25, 1925, a prisoner was released from Peterhead jail. Concealed beneath his dentures, so the prison authorities could not find it, was an urgent note from a fellow convict.

It included a message for one of the most famous men in the world – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes.

Oscar Slater, the man who sent the message, had already spent 16 years in prison for a murder he did not commit.

In 1908, an 82-year-old spinster, Marion Gilchrist, was living in a large flat in a prosperous neighbourhood of Glasgow. On the evening of December that year, her maid popped out to buy a newspaper. She was gone for just 15 minutes, but when she returned she found her mistress bludgeoned to death.

“Miss Gilchrist,” reports Margalit Fox in this gripping account of the murder and its aftermath, “had been beaten so savagely that autopsy photographs depict a face that looks as though it had never been human.”

Oscar Slater, whose real name was Oscar Leschziner, was born in Germany in 1872. He had lived in New York, London, Paris and Brussels as well as Glasgow. He moved in a dodgy underworld of chancers and semi-criminals, but he had no record of violence.

There was not a single link between him and Miss Gilchrist. Almost certainly, he had never heard of her before he was accused of killing her.

Unfortunately, the police were looking for a suspect. In Slater – a gambler, a foreigner, a Jew and a less than solid citizen – they found an ideal candidate.

His pawning of a brooch similar to one stolen from Miss Gilchrist brought him to their attention. It was not Miss Gilchrist’s brooch but this scarcely mattered. The police wanted him found guilty. In what Conan Doyle later called “a disgraceful frameup”, they made sure he would be.

Witnesses had seen a man leaving the scene of the murder.

In an identity parade, dark-haired, olive-skinned Slater was placed among 11 pale, pink Scotsmen. As a journalist later wrote, it was “like attempting to conceal a bull-dog among ladies’ poodles”. Unsurprisingly, the witnesses picked out Slater.

All evidence in Slater’s favour was either ignored or suppressed. At his trial, the judge gave a summing-up that was outrageously biased against him.

He was found guilty and sentenced to death. He had always been fascinated by machinery, but Slater surprised his warders by taking an interest in the gallows that was being constructed to hang him.

However, he was not to become too intimately acquainted with it – his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.

In the words of a writer at the time, he was “held to be too guilty to be released, yet not guilty enough to be hanged”.

It was at this point that Conan Doyle became involved. With his big build and walrus moustache, he looked more Dr Watson than Holmes. But, Conan Doyle had a track record for reversing miscarriages of justice. Using observation and logic like his world-famous creation, he had already cleared the name of George Edalji in as bizarre a case as any Holmes had faced.

 

AN ANGLO-Indian solicitor living in the Midlands, he had been convicted of a series of animal maimings. Conan Doyle demonstrated that the man could not have been responsible.

Conan Doyle’s first efforts for Slater were unsuccessful and the convicted man continued to suffer in prison for years. Margalit Fox quotes extensively from his moving letters to his family back in Germany, which show he was very far from the unfeeling monster that had been described in court.

When Conan Doyle received the tiny note from the dentures in 1925 (it still exists in the Mitchell Library in Glasgow), he was inspired to try again. Times had changed, and Slater had so obviously been the victim of official dishonesty and incompetence that finally, after 18 years inside, the work of Conan Doyle and other supporters had its reward.

Slater was released from Peterhead prison on November 14, 1927. The rest of the story is not always a happy one.

Conan Doyle and Slater, who only met once face-to-face, fell out over money.

Slater was granted compensation of £6,000.

Conan Doyle thought he was honoured-bound to reimburse some of his supporters’ expenses. But Slater didn’t. The two men never communicated again.

And after 20 years of freedom, Oscar Slater died at his home in Ayr in 1948.

Nobody knows for certain who killed Marion Gilchrist. The only certainty is that it wasn’t Oscar Slater, who suffered one of the worst miscarriages of justice in Scottish legal history.

Margalit Fox’s engrossing book brings his case back to vivid life and highlights the part played in it by the creator of the world’s most famous detective.

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