AT a time when the government is still seeking to extend the period the police have for holding a person without charging them from 28 to 90 days, it must be noted to what use the government has put its existing ‘star chamber’ court, the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC).
The government is currently deporting foreign nationals that it accuses of being supporters of terrorism.
Those about to be deported may appeal to the SIAC where a judge decides the issue by examining secret evidence, of which the accused is unaware, provided by the British intelligence agencies.
The accused is represented by a Special Advocate whom he or she never meets, who is picked by the state.
The accused is never shown or informed about the evidence that is going to be used to rubber stamp his deportation, possibly to a country where he or she will be tortured.
The accused and the rest of society are asked to take it on trust that British intelligence, allegedly the protector of a democratic society, would never provide the special court with faked or fraudulent evidence to secure deportation.
However, a security cleared judgement by an SIAC court reveals not only that secret government intelligence produced in an appeal case was fraudulent, but that this was discovered by chance by a Special Advocate, and that even after the discovery the Secretary of State and his legal representatives did not make a full disclosure.
Special Advocate Andrew Nicol found that intelligence posing as key evidence in one case was contradicted by the evidence in another SIAC case that he was involved in.
The SIAC judgement finds that ‘there has been fault on the party of the Secretary of State,’ and that failures by Home Office lawyers put the very administration of justice at risk.
Paragraphs 88-104 of the Closed Judgement on MK had to be rewritten.
After the preparation of this judgement in its final form (save for editorial changes), the Special Advocates submitted fresh material and submissions to the Commission arising out of the closed material available in Abu Doha’s case.
The crown contended that the accused, MK had let Abu Doha use his passport.
The rewritten paragraphs of the Closed Judgement record that ‘This allegation has been withdrawn, but that withdrawal came only as a result of the Special Advocates’ intervention, when their attention to the Abu Doha closed material revealed the existence of relevant documents. Had the coincidence of Mr Nicol’s instruction in both cases not occurred, the Commission would have been left to determine the question whether Abu Doha used the appellant’s passport on a false basis.’
Further: ‘The Commission observed in the course of the hearing that the method adopted for the preparation of the Secretary of State’s case on these appeals needed reappraisal. The preparation must be more “fact driven”. . .’
Then ‘As a result of the Special Advocates’ intervention, the Secretary of State’s legal team carried out a trawl of the Abu Doha material and submitted a supplementary bundle, but the documents enclosed with the letter of 24th April 2006 were not picked up by that exercise. It is not appropriate to respond to that failure by contending, as Mr Wilken has done in his letter dated 25th April 2006, that since the issue as to the passport was no longer live, further disclosure was not required. The Commission should have been made aware of the full extent of the failure to disclose.’
The human rights group Liberty is calling on the Home Secretary to clarify this ‘intelligence scandal’ before Parliament and for the Privy Council to urgently review the use of secret intelligence in SIAC cases.
The News Line calls for the scrapping of SIAC and all of the special ‘Star Chamber’ courts that have been set up, along with all of the draconian, allegedly anti-terror legislation that has abolished basic rights and liberties.
In fact, the only remedy for the growing powers of the state and its conviction that a full disclosure of the facts in life or death cases is unnecessary is a socialist revolution to smash the capitalist state apparatus to bring in a workers’ government and socialism.
