Justice

Tom Griffin (London, OK): Young offenders institutions are to be allowed to continue using pain-inflicting restraint techniques following a government review published yesterday.

The review was set up following inquests last year into the deaths of 14-year-old Adam Rickwood and 15-year-old Gareth Myatt in privately-run secure training centres in 2004.

Stuart Weir (Cambridge, Democratic Audit): We are a moderate lot.  We believe in the rule of law and believe uncertainly that no-one is above the law in this country. Since the 1980s at least, we have become fearful of the powers that governments shower on the police and alarmed often by their conduct. But we have shrunk from arguing that we live in a ‘police state’ – we don’t want to exaggerate.

But at the effective end of a long and tortuous legal process, an inquest jury has been denied the right to pass a verdict of ‘unlawful killing’ on the ruthless shooting dead by police marksmen of an innocent man on his way to work. With curious blindness, this extra-judicial killing has been treated as a one-off, with plenty of coverage of the issues that have arisen directly, but little or no analysis of the longer-term context. The Sunday broadsheets were almost entirely silent.

Tom Griffin (London, OK): The inquest into the death of Jean Charles De Menezes heard for the first time today from one of the firearms officers who carried out the shooting.

C12 recalled that the innocent Brazilian got up and walked towards him - and kept moving even after he shouted "armed police" and pointed his gun at him.

He said: "He continued on his forward momentum towards me.

"It was at that stage that I just formed the opinion that he's going to detonate, he's going to kill us and I have to act now in order to stop this from happening."

The hearing came as the De Menezes family prepare to take part in tomorrow's annual United Friends and Family Campaign procession from Trafalgar Square to Downing Street.

Tom Griffin (London, OK): Yesterday's proceedings at the De Menezes inquest provide an important illustration of why the Counter Terrorism Bill deserves continued scrutiny even after the defeat of 42 days in the Lords.

Justice4Jean reports:

An officer, known only as 'Owen' due to being successfully granted anonymity for the inquest, admitted to deleting a section of notes which would have been potentially vital evidence to any investigative proceedings.

'Owen', who was Deputy Surveillance Co-ordinator for the operation and was present in the operation control room working alongside senior officers including DAC Cressida Dick and D Supt Jon Boucher, wrote up detailed notes of his recollections shortly after Jean's death. These included details of conversations, decisions and commands given by senior officers during the final half hour of Jean's life before his fatal shooting.

Charlie Pottins (London, Justice4jean): A killing like that of Jean Charles de Menezes, shot in the head by police on a London Underground train, could happen again, a senior police officer involved in leading the operation has told the inquest into Jean Charles' death.

So far the jury has been given a crash course on police procedures, learning about "Gold" and "Silver" levels of command, designated senior officers(DSO), and the respective roles of SO12(Special Branch), SO13 (Anti-Terrorist branch) and CO19/SO 19 (Firearms) officers.

Tom Griffin (London, OK): With the House of Lords set to vote on 42 day detention later this month, the Council of Europe has today raised a number of concerns about  how terror suspects are being held under the existing 28-day regime.

A new report by the Council's Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment (CPT) warned:

The existing - and a fortiori possible new - provisions regarding the permissible length of pre-charge detention in cases falling under the terrorism legislation are a matter of considerable concern to the CPT. The Committee has no intention of entering into the current debate on the arguments for and against the length of pre-charge detention of terrorist suspects in the United Kingdom. However, as the CPT has emphasised in the past, in the interests of the prevention of ill-treatment, the sooner a criminal suspect passes into the hands of a custodial authority which is functionally and institutionally separate from the police, the better. Consequently, the Committee must insist that neither the existing nor any new provisions in this area should result in criminal suspects spending a prolonged period of time in police custody. 

Patrick Corrigan, (Amnesty Blogs: Belfast and Beyond): A Northern Ireland Truth Commission moved a step closer to reality on Thursday with the call by Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams for such a body to be established to deal with the legacy of the thirty-year conflict.

His endorsement of the idea and call for it be helped by "all relevant parties", suggests that the IRA, which was responsible for over 1,700 deaths – nearly half of the overall death toll from the conflict – could be ready to participate in a truth recovery process.

Patrick Corrigan, (Amnesty Blogs: Belfast and Beyond): Looks like the Observer's Henry McDonald has been hearing the same rumours around Belfast as I have – namely, that the report by the Eames-Bradley Consultative Group on the Past is to be postponed (yet again) until the end of the year at least.

The Group concluded its investigation as long ago as January. When I last blogged this topic in late May (Northern Ireland: 'It must never happen again'), at the time of a high-profile speech by the Group's chairs Archbishop Robin Eames and Denis Bradley, I mentioned that the report was expected later in the summer. Then, it was said, it would be out in September. Then October. Now McDonald is reporting December, while I am hearing that we could be into next year before the Group's findings finally become public.

 Damian O'Loan (Paris): The situation in Stormont may now merit the term crisis. A prominent Sinn Fein representative in the South of Ireland, Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin TD, has threatened collapse of the Assembly if policing and justice are not devolved: “we will have no option but to pull out our ministers.” Jeffrey Donaldson MP, MLA, Privy Council member and possible Justice Minister, has called for clarification of the threat: “Do they want to stay in the executive? If they do, let's meet and address these issues."

Both sides claim the other refuses to talk; it is widely held that Sinn Fein are blocking the passage of other Ministerial business until their key electoral promises have been resolved – or as Peter Robinson has it: “Adams seems to think that it is the role of everyone to move to his position.” The other parties are unforgiving, nationalist SDLP leader Mark Durkan saying “The soundings coming from Sinn Féin at the minute are more ludicrous than ominous.” Moderate unionism's leader Sir Reg Empey warned “This sort of behaviour cannot continue for much longer.”

Tom Griffin (London, OK): It's an interesting reflection on the rise of the database state that some of the best reporting on UK civil liberties these days can be found in the pages of online I.T. magazine The Register.

In the latest example, writer John Ozimek follows up the case of former head teacher John Pinnington, which he argues "takes the UK one step closer to becoming an 'informant society' along the lines of the former East Germany or Soviet Union.

Geoffrey Bindman (London, BIHR): The interesting OurKingdom debate on Labour After Brown risks becoming too remote from actual policy needs as it discusses general strategy. Of course, government needs to be fairer and extend justice in a way that supports individuals while building shared values. If this is what David Miliband and Sunder Katwala mean by combining social democracy with liberalism, who could disagree? Except that it runs the danger of phrase-making. What I am looking for is a much more principled approach to endorsing the need for public values that explicitly face down the marketisation of government that has been the tragic hallmark of New Labour. After a lifetime of support, I have witnessed this process at first hand, as the legacy of 1945 is systematically undone. What is happening is wrong. We need the new generation to identify that it is wrong and pledge to reverse it.

Tom Griffin (London, OK): As OK noted last month, the extension of detention without trial to 42 days is not the only worrying measure in the Counter-Terrorism Bill which is currently making it's way through the Lords. Today's Times suggests there is mounting opposition to the drastic restrictions on inquests under the proposed legislation.

Lawyers, opposition MPs and pressure groups have told The Times that the move represents a fundamental breach of the right to a public inquiry into a death – a centuries-old mainstay of British justice. 

They said that a full-scale campaign is being prepared to block the provision, which granted the Home Secretary unprecedented powers to intervene in the workings of the judiciary.

 Damian O'Loan (Paris): After months of deadlock, it looks as if there is finally movement on the transfer of policing and justice powers to the Stormont Assembly. Sinn Féin had falsely claimed that a May 'O8 deadline for the transfer was secured in the St Andrews Agreement. The DUP opposed any deadline, which was was fundamental to Sinn Féin's vote to support the police. That support in turn was crucial for the creation of the current Stormont executive – hence the present crisis.

Now the two main parties have decided there will be a single Policing and Justice Department and Minister, and that they will not field candidates.

Tom Griffin (London, OK):  In today's Guardian, Duncan Campbell draws out some of the implications of Barry George's acquittal for the murder of Jill Dando, a charge for which he'd already served eight years in Prison:

It was widely assumed that after the Birmingham Six, the Guildford Four, the Bridgwater Three, Judith Ward and those many other high-profile cases that originated in the 1970s - when evidence rules were lax and there was still a culture of institutional corruption in some branches of the police service - the days of miscarriages of justice were over. Not so.

In a comment on Damian O'Loan's lament about ongoing sectarianism in Northern Ireland, Anthony Barnett asked why restorative justice of all things is deepening the divide when it is supposed to do the opposite. Damian's answer vividly illuminates what is going on. 

Damian O'Loan (Paris): Restorative justice involves community representatives mediating in low-level disputes, reducing criminalisation while better serving victims' interests. It has been effective internationally, most particularly regarding youth justice. What's specific to Northern Ireland, where it was this week further institutionalised, is it lies in the hands of groups rising from the embers of paramilitarism.

John Jackson (London, Mishcon de Reya): At the end of her judgement in the BAE case one of the law lords, Lady  Hale, said “- - I would wish that the world was a better place where honest and conscientious public servants were not put in impossible situations such as this - - -“. I would wish that too. I would also wish that people and nations did not seek to advance their interests by violence or the threat of violence. If that were so there would be no need of armaments industries and questions of national security could be dealt with in a more open and satisfactory way.

The impossible situation to which Lady Hale referred was the dilemma confronting the Director of the SFO in deciding, with incomplete information, whether, to quote Lord Bingham, “the public interest in pursuing an important investigation into alleged bribery was outweighed by the public interest in protecting the lives of British citizens”. The incompleteness of information available to the Director is the link to my second wish and my remark about how questions of national security are dealt with.

John Jackson (London, Mishcon de Reya ): Doubtless some, perhaps many, will be disappointed by the unanimous decision of five law lords to overturn the judgement delivered, and probably crafted, by Lord Justice Moses in the Serious Fraud Office’s BAE case. And those disappointed will include some who have convinced themselves that the Blair government acted cravenly to protect the commercial interests of BAE - a large employer and taxpayer - or even that this all fitted in with a longer term plan by Blair himself to grease his passage, post-premiership, to a position from which he could enjoy the trappings of international office and advance the interests of his friends in the United States in the maintenance of oil supplies from the Middle East.

In today's Guardian, George Monbiot takes up the case of former diplomat Craig Murray, who is facing the threat of a libel action by private military contractor Tim Spicer.

Monbiot argues that Spicer's lawyers are threatening an injunction "against a book they haven't read and that won't be published until September," although Murray himself suggests elsewhere that they may have been tipped off by the Foreign Office.

Tom Griffin (London, The Green Ribbon): The Counter Terrorism Bill continues its passage through Parliament today, with its second reading in the House of Lords.

Most of the controversy around the bill has focused on 42-day detention, but there are a number of other provisions that deserve serious scrutiny. Inquest has produced a briefing that focuses on part 6 of the bill, which it calls "a fundamental attack on the independence and transparency of the coronial system in England and Wales."

Andrew Blick (London, Democratic Audit): The parliamentary joint committee on the draft Constitutional Renewal Bill (CRB) will soon begin taking evidence. I will be posting regularly about some of the debates and issues it should be taking into account, starting with the role of the Attorney General. Unfortunately the proposed legislation does not fully address and in some senses would worsen the very issues that brought reform of this office onto the agenda in the first place. Controversy has arisen in recent years over the role of the Attorney General that combines significant legal duties with government and party roles. In two major cases, there has been justifiable suspicion over Lord Goldsmith's revision of his advice on the legality of the Iraq War and government resistance to publishing that advice; and his part in putting pressure on the Serious Fraud Office to get it to drop the Al-Yamamah arms deal investigation. In both cases, it seems that he might have been leant on. Finally, there was considerable doubt about his potential role in deciding whether to prosecute over the 'cash for honours' investigation.