2013-05-25T02:42:38-04:00 Clare Algar http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/author/index.php?author=clare-algar Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Clare Algar Good old fashioned elbow grease. tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2521749 2013-01-22T19:00:00-05:00 2013-03-24T05:12:02-04:00

Clare Algar http://www.huffingtonpost.com/clare-algar/ partly successful in pushing a case concerning what has been described as the "sexual and psychological abuse of campaigners for social justice... by undercover police officers" into a secret tribunal, from which little if any evidence of just how this was allowed to happen will emerge.

For now, that is not the end of the story - the judge ruled that although part of the case, brought by women who say they were deceived into having sex with undercover police officers, will be heard by the intensely secretive Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT), this will be followed by an open hearing in the High Court.

However, should the government's plans for a vast roll-out of secret courts across the civil justice system pass parliament, it will be a very different story in future. The women bringing these allegations - described by the judge as "very serious" - would likely find themselves faced with the choice of the secret tribunal on the one hand and a secret court on the other.

Neither would allow them to challenge the case presented by the authorities, or to even hear the evidence which is used against them; should they lose their claim - which becomes much more likely in a system where the odds are stacked in the government's favour - they would never know why; and of course, both press and public would be left in the dark about just what our law enforcement and security services had been getting up to in our name.

Ministers may claim that the plans for secret courts - known as Closed Material Procedures (CMPs) - currently before Parliament would apply to only a tiny number of cases, concerned with 'national security.' Yet this is a nebulous term which the government refuses to define and which is known to have been misused to cover up embarrassment in the past. It is all too easy to see how the activities and techniques of the police could be claimed to have a bearing on 'national security', and therefore require the doors of the courtroom to be shut.

Moreover, the Kafkaesque claims made by police lawyers in this week's case - that they could not have a fair trial unless the other side was excluded altogether - are eerily similar to the claims currently being advanced by Ken Clarke in support of the secret courts bill. It is worth emphasising just how dangerously wrong-headed such claims are: the state is in effect saying that it is unfair to the state if they are not handed a massive advantage over their opponent. This takes the form of being allowed to kick the other side out of a closed courtroom, meaning that while the state can challenge the evidence brought forward by the citizen, the citizen cannot challenge or even hear the evidence brought forward by the state.

The potential spread of the new rash of secret courts would - by Ken Clarke's own admission - not stop at cases involving the security services. Questioned in Parliament, Mr Clarke was forced to admit that secret courts could also be used in cases where soldiers' families brought cases against the MoD for negligence resulting in the death of a loved one; he also refused to rule out that they could be used in cases where the government faced embarrassment over corrupt arms deals.

This week's case has demonstrated that the desire for secret courts - which would represent a license to cover-up government embarrassment - is widespread among state authorities. For now, the civil courts represent a last safeguard to ensure ministers and officials can be brought to book for any abuses they carry out. But should the Secret Courts Bill pass Parliament in the coming months, this last redoubt will be lost. MPs must not nod through these plans which would not only destroy our centuries-old traditions of fair and equal justice, but would in effect put the government above the law.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1334722 2012-03-09T10:42:59-05:00 2012-05-09T05:12:02-04:00

Clare Algar http://www.huffingtonpost.com/clare-algar/ chilling threat to liberty and justice" an "excessive and dangerous" move which would "shake our constitution to its common law roots" tilting it "towards the closed courts...so favoured by despots" and miring individuals in "Kafkaesque cases."

As the Liberal Democrat Spring Conference gets underway, the disturbing potential of the government's plans to extend secret justice across the country's civil courts has hit the headlines, with the Mail, Times, Guardian, Independent and FT all united in condemnation.

That sense of alarm is also becoming apparent among the Lib Dems. Tom Brake MP, chair of the party's backbench Home Affairs committee, has described the Justice and Security Green Paper's plans to extend 'Closed Material Procedures' - in which the citizen will be unable to hear or challenge secret evidence used by the state against them - as "a source of concern," adding that "many Liberal Democrats share these fundamental concerns."

Now, ahead of the party's gathering in Gateshead, an Emergency Motion has been submitted by party members, "call[ing] on Liberal Democrat parliamentarians and Ministers in the coalition government to... veto any proposed bill seeking to implement the Paper's proposals."

The motion has the backing of former Director of Public Prosecutions and Lib Dem peer Ken Macdonald - who has described the plans as "an audacious attack on the fundamental principle of British justice: that you should be able to know, and to challenge, the claims which are made against you." Lord Macdonald, who is Chair of legal action charity Reprieve, also warned that the Green Paper "threatens to put the Government above the law, while leaving ordinary citizens, and the press, shut out of their own justice system."

The plans were set out in a largely-unnoticed consultation document, released with little fanfare towards the end of last year, which proposed to roll out CMPs across the civil justice system in England. In these, once the minister has made the call that there is 'sensitive' material involved, the court goes into lockdown, and the citizen (along with the media) is excluded. To defend this move, Justice Secretary Ken Clarke has pointed to the 'Special Advocate,' a security-cleared lawyer who is allowed into the closed court to make the case for the client. What he has not mentioned is that meaningful communication between Special Advocate and client is simply not possible. Imagine, for a moment, trying to defend someone from allegations without being able to tell them what those allegations are, or to ask them for a response, and you will get an idea of how near-hopeless the Special Advocate's task can be. These lawyers - the very people who should know best - have been highly critical of the plans, warning the Government that CMPs are "fundamentally unfair".

On top of this, ministers propose to simply do away with the legal principle through which we first found out about Britain's involvement in the rendition and torture of Binyam Mohamed. This case, concerning a British resident who was flown by the CIA from one brutal torture-site to another, while the UK fed intelligence and questions to his captors, was what blew our country's involvement in some of the worst excesses of the 'War on Terror' wide open. The grisly truths which emerged from Mr Mohamed's case were far from comfortable - not least for the Governments on either side of the Atlantic - but they were facts which had to be known and confronted, in order to ensure our country's involvement in such abuses was never allowed to happen again. Again, much of the Government's defence of its plans has been misleading. Briefing by officials that they are simply trying to stop opportunistic compensation claims by the enemies of the state obscures the reality: that the Binyam Mohamed case was about securing proof that so-called 'evidence' which US prosecutors wanted to use against him in a capital case had been obtained from him under the most appalling torture, and was therefore meaningless.

The Green Paper has so far received far less public scrutiny than it deserves, and many of the government's dubious claims in its defence have simply been accepted at face value. It has to be hoped that, by turning the spotlight on it this weekend, the Lib Dems start to address that lack of attention. Unless we all pull together to challenge these plans, we risk sleepwalking into a system of secret justice.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.895488 2011-07-13T09:14:28-04:00 2011-09-12T05:12:01-04:00

Clare Algar http://www.huffingtonpost.com/clare-algar/
The chances are you'll have heard about David Cameron's announcement of an inquiry into phone hacking at the News of the World. But amid the fury around the paper's unbelievable callousness, the first stages in the quiet burial of the Gibson Inquiry - concerned with the role of our country's security services in the torture, rendition and illegal imprisonment of those swept up by the 'War on Terror' - have gone almost entirely unnoticed.

Many people may be understandably unconcerned by the lack of media attention for this event - citing the inevitable exhaustion of press and public interest in an issue that has dragged on for years, or the incomprehensible excitement of human rights geeks around the Inquiry's 'terms of reference' and 'protocols'.

But for the millions of British people currently fuming at the way in which the NOTW so clearly overstepped the mark of public decency, the fate of the torture inquiry should be a stark warning. As the months have dragged on, public outrage has faded, the issue has dropped from the headlines, and the Government has ultimately been left a largely free hand to establish a toothless and excessively secretive body which few now hope will do much to get to the bottom of what happened.

Sir Peter Gibson's Inquiry will not have the power to compel witnesses to attend, or evidence to be produced. The level of secrecy will be overwhelming, with little or no chance for the security services to be meaningfully questioned on their activities. And the final decision on what is made public will rest with the Prime Minister.

Even if you don't care about what abuses were carried out by UK security services - and, of course, you should - just try projecting these conditions a few months into the future when the NOTW inquiry is established: imagine an inquiry which will be unable to insist that the journalists implicated attend, or that they turn over the records concerning what they did; in which those who hacked the phones of murder victims are questioned in secret, free from any worry of being cross-questioned by their victims or their lawyers; and in which the ultimate decision on whether to publish a report which might make difficult reading for, say, Andy Coulson rests with his former employer in No 10.

This hasn't happened yet, but there are ominous parallels - both inquiries are set to be held under the conveniently vague and relatively powerless conditions of being 'judge-led', rather than 'judicial', or 'public'. David Cameron has even held up the Gibson Inquiry as a 'good example' for the NOTW one.

The Government still has time to toughen up the Gibson Inquiry, and ensure it produces some real answers. And it has to be hoped that the MPs and the journalists who made so much noise when we first heard about MI5's collusion in the brutal treatment of people like Binyam Mohamed will still hold ministers to their promises.

But if it is too late for Gibson, it still needs to be part of a larger conversation we have in this country about real accountability. The cycle of revelation, outrage, inquiry and whitewash has become depressingly familiar. You should care about the torture inquiry - even if only to make it clear to the Government that you won't allow them to bury the hacking inquiry in the same way.]]>