Britain, US accused of creating terror fears 11-06-05

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Sat, 11 Jun 2005 11:59:38 -0700 (PDT)

Britain, US accused of creating terror fears 11-06-05

 

 

 

Breaking News and Commentary from Citizens For Legitimate Government

 

11 June 2005

 

 

 

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Britain, US accused of creating terror fears --Law lord says UK and US

tried to bend international law with Belmarsh and Guantánamo

detentions --One of Britain's most eminent judges yesterday accused

the British and US governments of whipping up public fear of

terrorism, and of being determined " to bend established international

law to their will and to undermine its essential structures " .

 

 

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Britain accused of creating terror fears

 

Law lord says UK and US tried to bend international law with Belmarsh

and Guantánamo detentions

 

Clare Dyer, Legal editor

Saturday June 11, 2005

The Guardian

 

One of Britain's most eminent judges yesterday accused the British and

US governments of whipping up public fear of terrorism, and of being

determined " to bend established international law to their will and to

undermine its essential structures " .

 

Lord Steyn, one of the longest-serving law lords in Britain's top

court, the House of Lords, made the accusation while delivering his

first public comments on the lords' ruling in the Belmarsh case.

 

He was forced to step down last year from the panel of judges hearing

the challenge to the lawfulness of detention without trial for foreign

ter rorist suspects after the government took exception to earlier

remarks he had made on the subject.

 

Last December the law lords ruled by 8-1 that the detention without

trial of foreign nationals in Belmarsh and Woodhill prisons and the

Broadmoor high security hospital breached human rights laws.

 

Lord Steyn's remarks yesterday came a day after a damning report from

the Council of Europe's committee for the prevention of torture, which

concluded that the treatment of some detainees " could be considered as

amounting to inhuman and degrading treatment " .

 

He was giving the keynote address to an audience of judges and lawyers

at the annual meeting in central London of the British Institute of

International and Comparative Law, whose chairman is Lord Bingham, the

senior law lord.

 

The session was chaired by the appeal court judge Dame Mary Arden. The

audience included Lord Brown, another law lord, Judge Luzius

Wildhaber, president of the European court of human rights in

Strasbourg, Sir Franklin Berman QC, former legal adviser to the

Foreign Office, and Elizabeth Wilmshurst, the deputy Foreign Office

legal adviser who resigned over the attorney general's advice that the

Iraq war was legal.

 

Lord Steyn hailed the Belmarsh ruling as " a great day for the law " ,

and " a vindication of the rule of law, ranking with historic judgments

of our courts " .

 

He added: " Nobody doubts in any way the very real risk of

international terrorism. But the Belmarsh decision came against the

public fear whipped up by the governments of the United States and the

United Kingdom since September 11 2001 and their determination to bend

established international law to their will and to undermine its

essential structures. "

 

As far as he could ascertain, he said, the Belmarsh case was the first

in which a government had sought, and managed, to change the

composition of the panel of law lords due to hear a particular case.

 

The government, repre sented by the attorney general, argued that Lord

Steyn should not sit on the case because, in a 2002 lecture, he had

said: " In my view the suspension of article 5 of the European

convention on human rights - which prevents arbitrary detention - so

that people can be locked up without trial when there is no evidence

on which they could be prosecuted is not in present circumstances

justified. "

 

It was " a matter of speculation " , he said in a printed footnote to

yesterday's lecture, whether the challenge to his right to sit on the

panel for the Belmarsh case had been motivated by his 2003 lecture

Guantánamo Bay: The Legal Black Hole. That lecture, in which he

attacked the treatment of prisoners by the US at its base in Cuba as a

" monstrous failure of justice " , drew headlines around the world.

 

The attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, argued in the Belmarsh case that

the unelected judges had no democratic mandate and should defer in the

sphere of national security to politicians who had been elected by the

people.

 

Lord Steyn said Lord Bingham's judgment in the Belmarsh case, pointing

out the " wholly democratic mandate " given to judges by parliament in

the Human Rights Act, had contained the " most eloquent and magisterial

rebuke " to an attorney general since Lord Denning quoted the words of

Thomas Fuller: " Be you ever so high, the law is above you. "