Last December, the Law Lords ruled by eight to one that it is unlawful for the British authorities to detain indefinitely foreign terrorist suspects whom they are unable to deport to their countries of origin for fear they would then suffer ‘human rights’ violations.
That judgement may yet come back to haunt their Lordships should, as the Security Services warn, Westminster be a prime target for an Islamist dirty bomb. Alas, if it does, they will not be the only ones whose safety their judgment will have imperilled.
The Law Lords gave two grounds for their ruling. First, they judged, indefinite detention of foreign terror suspects discriminatory, since UK nationals suspected of terrorism enjoyed legal protection from indefinite detention without trial. Second, they judged such indefinite detention without trial to violate the right to freedom of all placed under it irrespective of their nationality.
The early Christmas present the Lord Lords gave to Charles Clarke on his first day as Home Secretary left him the unenviable task of deciding how to reconcile that ruling with his responsibility to safeguard national security in the face of the continuing threat from Islamist terrorism.
Yesterday, the Home Secretary unveiled his ‘solution’. He is to introduce emergency legislation that will replace indefinite detention without trial for foreign terror suspects unable to be deported or tried in court with ‘control orders’. These orders will effectively place their recipients under indefinite house-arrest and will be able to be given to UK citizens as well as foreigners suspected of plotting terror.
Under the proposed new legislation, the Home Secretary will be empowered to place these orders if the police or security services give him reasonable cause, which cannot be revealed in court, to believe anyone a national security risk, be they British or foreign.
Civil liberties groups remain unsatisfied by the proposed new control orders. They claim them equally in breach of the article of the European Convention on Human Rights forbidding indefinite detention without trial. To them, it is small comfort the Home Secretary has avoided being discriminatory in locking up without trial whomever he chooses by extending that risk to UK nationals as well as foreigners.
Many less enthusaistic than these organisations about the often spurious ‘human rights’ claimed today might well prefer to risk falling foul of arbitrary detention than risking becoming victim of some Islamist terror bomb. Those with such a preference might also have preferred had the Home Secretary extended indefinite detention without trial to British terror suspects as well as foreign ones, where the relevant evidence could not be revealed in court, to attempting to restrain both by ‘control orders’.
Control orders are unlikely to prove any more effective against genuine terrorists than ASBO’s have proved in restraining juvenile delinquents given them. In its ‘Public Agenda’ supplement this week, The Times reports that the Association of Youth Offending Team Managers has found ‘in some areas of England every ASBO is breached and that one breach in eight leads to custody”.
Should ‘control orders’ be as ineffective a constraint as ASBO’s, then all the Lord Lords will have accomplished by delivering their ruling -- besides triumphantly displaying their newly granted authority over Parliament which, for all its flaws, remains, for the time being, elected -- is to make us have to rest less easily in our beds … or on the tube, going to and from Westminster.
Comments (3)
This is a model example of what I meant by reality dissolving. The perception of terrorists as equally comparable to others requires the content of their respective beliefs, or their motives, to be abstracted and the decision about how to treat them made by comparing the empty abstractions which then stand for human beings. By removing human nature the abstract theorist can make what he thinks are fair comparison. In fact they are unfair because innocent people are then put on a level with wicked ones. It is a consequence of the explosion of abstractions since the French Revolution.
Posted by David Hamilton | January 31, 2005 2:00 PM
Posted on January 31, 2005 14:00
It's a flaw in our system that forbids us to deport terror suspects to their countries of origin in the first place.
The fact that they may find themselves in serious straits with their homelands is no concern of ours. By making it our responsibility to protect them from the (possibly) unpleasant attentions of their own security forces - attention they may well have earned through their own actions - we have put ourselves in our current dilemma.
We will, of course, still be blamed should their countries of origin behave ruthlessly with them but since we're wrong whatever we do better we be wrong and protect ourselves than be wrong on an indefinite basis.
Posted by Two Sixes | January 28, 2005 1:18 PM
Posted on January 28, 2005 13:18
Many less enthusiastic than these organisations about the often spurious ‘human rights’ claimed today might well prefer to risk falling foul of arbitrary detention than risking becoming victim of some Islamist terror bomb.
What's that old maxim about liberty, safety, sacrificing, and certain people deserving neither?
Posted by john b | January 27, 2005 11:15 PM
Posted on January 27, 2005 23:15