UK

‘A request to the European Court must be lodged within the next two weeks. The clock is ticking’ - Colm O’Gorman

Allegations that the UK government sanctioned the use of torture and ill-treatment in Northern Ireland in the 1970s should be re-examined by the European Court of Human Rights and subject to a new independent investigation. 

That is the call from Amnesty International, which is urging the Irish government to request a re-opening of the landmark 1978 Ireland v UK judgment involving the torture and ill-treatment of the 14 so-called ‘hooded men’, who were interned in Northern Ireland in 1971.

The call was supported by the ‘hooded men’ at an Amnesty International press conference in Dublin this morning.

Today’s decision of the Court of Appeal in London permitting a lawsuit regarding illegal transfer, torture and other ill-treatment to proceed puts the onus on the UK government to answer allegations for its role in a notorious rendition case, Amnesty International said.

Abdul Hakim Belhaj and Fatima Boudchar, a married couple, demand justice for their abduction in 2004 and their illegal transfer to Libya where they were detained, tortured and ill-treated at the hands of the US and Libyan governments, with the knowledge and cooperation of UK officials.

“The government argued that UK officials should not be held responsible for their involvement in human rights violations, including torture, as long as such illegal acts were committed in cooperation with a foreign government and outside the UK. The Appeals Court rightly rejected this argument,” said John Dalhuisen, director of Amnesty’s Europe and Central Asia programme.

Amnesty International and Privacy International have accused the UK government of trying to rush through legislation in an attempt to deflect from a landmark hearing starting Monday, challenging the validity of UK spy agencies’ justification for mass surveillance of British citizens’ social media use.

“The UK government is manipulating national laws to ensure it can continue to flout international ones,” said Michael Bochenek, Senior Director for Law and Policy at Amnesty International.

“Clearly Number 10 would rather move the goalposts than play by the rules.”

Just two working days before the start of the Investigatory Powers Tribunal hearing, UK Home Secretary Theresa May announced that the government is fast-tracking a new bill regulating internet surveillance, the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Bill. She claimed the draft law will ‘put beyond doubt the application of our laws on interception’.

The High Court of England and Wales struck a blow against freedom of expression today when it ruled that the nine-hour detention of David Michael Miranda, partner of the former Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, under anti-terrorism legislation was lawful and proportionate.

Brazilian national David Miranda was detained in August 2013 while in transit in London’s Heathrow airport. He was held for nearly nine hours under Schedule 7 of the UK’s Terrorism Act 2000 – the limit allowed without seeking further authority to continue the detention.

“This ruling underscores our long-standing concerns about the over-broad nature of the UK’s anti-terror laws, which are wide open to abuse and misuse,” said John Dalhuisen, Europe and Central Asia Programme Director at Amnesty International.

“It is clearly deeply troubling if laws designed to combat terrorism can be used against those involved in reporting stories of fundamental public interest. There is no question the ruling will have a chilling effect on freedom of expression in the future.”

Amnesty International has today announced it has issued a claim against the UK over concerns that the organisation’s communications have been unlawfully accessed by the UK intelligence services.

In June disclosures made by the US whistle-blower Edward Snowden revealed that the US was routinely accessing the communications of millions of people through a previously secret programme, PRISM, run by the National Security Agency (NSA) which the UK authorities had access to. It later emerged that the UK’s intelligence agency GCHQ may have also subjected people to blanket surveillance through its own secret programme called Tempora.

These revelations starkly exposed the huge gaps in the ability of the existing UK legal framework to keep pace with technological developments and therefore protect the human rights of those affected

Amnesty believes that given the global and often highly sensitive nature of its work, it is highly likely that the organisation’s communications have been intercepted unlawfully by intelligence services both in the UK and US, as the content would be of interest to those agencies.

“There’s a cruel irony in the fact that Northern Ireland is held up as a success story when many victims' families actually consider their treatment a failure.”

Victims of the conflict in Northern Ireland are being ‘disgracefully let down’ by a flawed and fragmented approach to dealing with the past, Amnesty International said today (Thursday 12 September) as it published a new report.

Northern Ireland: Time to Deal with the Past blames the failure to deliver truth and justice on a lack of political will from both the UK government and Northern Ireland’s political parties.

Fifteen years on from the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement, and one week ahead of the start of major new talks, the 78-page report finds that victims and their families have been failed by successive attempts to investigate abuses.

A failure to deliver a comprehensive approach to dealing with the past has contributed to the societal division that is still rife in Northern Ireland, Amnesty found.

A Guardian newspaper employee detained today while in transit at a London airport is clearly a victim of unwarranted revenge tactics, targeted for no more than who he is married to, Amnesty International said today.  

David Michael Miranda is married to Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian journalist who analyzed and published information on documents disclosing sweeping, systematic and unlawful surveillance by the US government. These documents were released by Edward Snowden.

Miranda was detained while in transit in Heathrow and was held in detention for nearly nine hours – the point at which the government would have had to seek further authority to continue the detention.

“It is utterly improbable that David Michael Miranda, a Brazilian national transiting through London, was detained at random, given the role his husband has played in revealing the truth about the unlawful nature of NSA surveillance,” said Widney Brown, Senior Director of International Law and Policy at Amnesty International.