By: Rosalind English
13 November 2013 by Rosalind English
There’s a crisis in South Africa’s mortuaries – in the investigation of death.
This is due to a number of problems – incompetent staff who fail to gather forensic evidence, creaking and inadequate facilities, and the sheer number of dead bodies waiting to be processed. In a gripping but bleak documentary about Salt River Mortuary, which is responsible for processing cadavers in the Western Cape, the figures will make you gasp and stretch your eyes:
For the Western Cape alone, 3,000 bodies are handled by this Mortuary each year. Of this number, 65% are unnatural deaths (accidents, suicides, homicides). Of that number (approx 2,000) a staggering 80% are homicides – in other words, Salt River is responsible for providing the forensic evidence for reconstructing the crime scenes leading to 1,600 murders a year.
Watch the ten minute film here.
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8 November 2013 by Rosalind English
AB, R (on the application of) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2013] EWHC 3453 (Admin) – read judgment
Here unfolds a story of sophisticated abuse of the asylum system in this country by an individual skilfully shamming persecution. Nor did the security agents who escorted the claimant on his departure come up smelling of roses: it emerged during the course of these proceedings that they had falsified a room clearance certificate to boost the defence case.
The judgment also points up the potentially far-reaching effect of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union and how this might render all the handwringing about the European Convention on Human Rights irrelevant, and a home grown Bill of Rights otiose.
Factual background
The claimant, whom Mostyn J describes as “a highly intelligent, manipulative, unscrupulous and deceitful person”, arrived in this country in 2005, was refused asylum and was deported in 2010. He sought judicial review of the Home Secretary’s decision to refuse his claim and return him to his state of embarkation, “Country A” (so designated because there was a reporting restriction order made in the original proceedings anonymising both the claimant, his country of origin, and the political organisation of which he claimed to be a member. Mostyn J “reluctantly” went along with that order in this proceedings, since neither of the parties applied to have it reviewed.)
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7 November 2013 by Rosalind English
CF v Security Service and others and Mohamed v Foreign and Commonwealth Office and others [[2013] EWHC 3402 (QB) – read judgment
The High Court has today made the first court ruling on the use of the Justice and Security Act 2013 in a civil claim for damages.
In a ruling on preliminary issues, Irwin J made a declaration that the government can make a closed material application to the court in this case. The Court also ruled on PII. The following summary is based on the Court’s press release.
Factual background
CF and Mohammed Ahmed Mohamed are both British citizens of Somali descent. CF left the United Kingdom in 2009, Mohammed Ahmed Mohamed having left in 2007. They were both detained by the Somaliland Authorities on 14 January 2011. They were then detained until removal to the UK on 14 March 2011. Each claims that they were unlawfully detained, tortured and mistreated during the period of detention in Somaliland.
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6 November 2013 by Rosalind English
AJA and others v Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis [2013] EWCA Civ 1342 – read judgment
The words “personal or other relationship” in the section 26(8)(a) Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 included intimate sexual relationships so that the Investigatory Powers Tribunal had jurisdiction to hear the appellants’ claims that their human rights had been violated by undercover police officers who had allegedly had sexual relationships with them
There were two groups of claimants in this case. The first three were represented by Birnberg Pierce & Partners (referred to as “the Birnberg claimants”). The second three were represented by Tuckers (referred to as “the Tuckers claimants”). Both groups alleged that they had suffered violations of their rights under Articles 3 and 5 by the officers for whom the respondents were responsible and that such conduct was contrary to the Human Rights Act 1998 s.6(1). They appealed against a decision that the Investigatory Powers Tribunal had jurisdiction to decide their human rights claims and that High Court proceedings should be stayed pending the IPT’s determination.
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1 November 2013 by Rosalind English
Youssef v Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs [2013] EWCA Civ 1302, 29 October 2013 – read judgment
There was nothing unlawful in the Foreign Secretary’s decision to allow a UK resident to be added to the UN’s Consolidated List of members of Al-Quaida and its associates .
This was an appeal against the Administrative Court’s dismissal of the appellant’s claim for judicial review of the secretary of state’s decision to allow him to be added to a list of persons subject to sanctions under UN Security Council Resolution 1617. This Resolution required UN member states to freeze the assets on those named on the Consolidated List of members of Al-Qaida and its associates. The relevant UN committee was asked to add the name of the appellant, an Egyptian national resident in the UK, to the list. The secretary of state placed a hold on the appellant’s designation so the UK could consider whether he met the criteria for designation. The Foreign Secretary subsequently accepted that he did meet the criteria and released the hold, which meant that he was added to the list. Once a designation is made, it lasts until all members of the Security Council can be persuaded that it should be lifted.
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31 October 2013 by Rosalind English
This week’s newspapers have highlighted the plight of the thousands of British homeowners who face demolition orders over their Spanish properties because they have been built without proper planning permission. Permits granted by town mayors during the property boom turn out not to be worth the paper they were written on, and since the regional authorities have overturned most of these permits, the buildings are condemned to destruction. Compensation from the developers and public officials who made these transactions possible is not forthcoming; as the Times leader points out
In a few cases, the courts have ordered that developers or town halls should compensate those who have lost their homes. Yet the former invariably opt for bankruptcy, instead, and even the latter seem markedly reluctant to pay out. Owners, often now back in Britain, face daunting and bewildering battles in foreign courts. (Tuesday 29 October, behind paywall)
Now one couple, Terry and Christine Haycock, are testing how far the Strasbourg Court will go to protect their property rights in this fracas (which would be under Article 1 Protocol 1).
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25 October 2013 by Rosalind English
Fagan, R (on the application of) v Times Newspapers Ltd and others [2013] EWCA Civ 1275 – read judgment
Only “clear and cogent evidence” that it was strictly necessary to keep an offender’s identity confidential would lead a court to derogate from the principle of open justice. The possibility of a media campaign that might affect the offender’s resettlement could not work as a justification for banning reporting about that offender, even though a prominent and inaccurate report about him had already led to harassment of his family.
This was an appeal by a serving prisoner, SF, against the dismissal of his application for anonymity and reporting restrictions in judicial review proceedings.
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25 October 2013 by Rosalind English
X Local Authority v Trimega Laboratories and others [2013] EWCC 6 (Fam) – read judgment
Technical evidence can sometimes be crucial to judicial decisions and this case shows how dramatic the consequences are for a family if evidence is unreliable. If the respondent in this case had not put probity before its commercial interests, a mother would have been deprived of the care of her child. Hence the importance of publishing the judgment.
The case arose out applications by the parents, a child and the child’s guardian to care proceedings for wasted costs orders against Trimega Laboratories. In short, the care proceedings had been brought for a number of reasons foremost of which was the mother’s “excessive drinking”. In March 2013 the mother said she had been abstinent from alcohol since August 2012. But in July 2013 a blood alcohol test report from Trimega suggested that she had been drinking. Her abstinence was a crucial factor in the plan for rehabilitation of the child to her care, and had it not been for this test result a final order would have been made on 25 July 2013 and the child returned to her.
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23 October 2013 by Rosalind English
R v Gul (Appellant) [2013] UKSC 64, 23 October 2013 – read judgment
It is a platitude that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. It is for precisely this reason that the international community has not been able to agree on a definition of terrorism to be embedded in international law.
The issue in this appeal was whether the definition of ‘terrorism’ in the UK Terrorism Act 2000 includes military attacks by non-state armed groups against national or international armed forces in a non-international armed conflict.
The following is taken from the Supreme Court’s press summary. References in square brackets are to paragraphs in the judgment.
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21 October 2013 by Rosalind English
There have been many interesting contributions to the debate triggered by Geraldine van Beuren’s fascinating guest post on the right to food.
But one comment deserves prominence in a post of its own. It comes from veteran blogger 1923thebook and he has this to say:
Growing up in the North of England in the 1920s and 1930s, I knew hunger as did my ancestors who despite the “charter of the forest” lived miserable, hungry, short lives while Britain’s ruling classes grew fat on the spoils of Empire. What I experienced as a lad along with the rest of my working class generation was famine and despite recent news reports, we are not experiencing the wide spread hunger that occurred in my youth when there was no social welfare state.
This is not to say that there is not hunger in today’s Britain because as joblessness increases poverty creeps back into this nation’s villages and cities like an ebb tide. But malnutrition today is not caused by want of food but the type food on offer to the poor which is empty of nutrition but rich in fat, sodium and chemicals that only a food scientist without a moral conscience could devise.
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21 October 2013 by Rosalind English
The proposed new extension to the six week badger cull has been defended on the basis that insufficient numbers of the animals in Gloucestershire have presented themselves to the marskmen’s bullets.
This proposal is now under attack from two directions. The chief scientific adviser for Natural England, the body responsible for licensing the cull, has called upon the government to stop the badger cull immediately. According to Damien Carrington writing in the Guardian,
The intervention by David Macdonald, chair of NE’s science advisory committee and one of the UK’s most eminent wildlife biologists, is a heavy blow for the environment secretary, Owen Paterson, and the National Farmers’ Union, who argue that killing badgers to curb tuberculosis in cattle is scientifically justified and necessary.
The Badger Trust is also sharpening its knives for fresh legal challenge. Its lawyers at Bindmans have written to Natural England and DEFRA, pointing out that the policy that DEFRA successfully defended in the Trust’s original judicial review , was based on “effectiveness”:
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18 October 2013 by Rosalind English
F v F [2013] EWHC 2683 (Fam) – read judgment
The High Court has ruled that two sisters must receive the MMR vaccine against their wishes and the wishes of their mother.
This was an application by the father for a declaration and a specific issue order concerning his daughters both receive the MMR vaccination. This was opposed by their mother.
Background
Following the breakdown of their parents’ marriage, the girls (aged 11 and 15 respectively) lived with their mother, and the father had contact every alternate weekend and half the school holidays. After publication of the now discredited paper published by Dr Andrew Wakefield in the Lancet connecting the MMR vaccine with autism, both parents agreed not to have a booster arranged for the older daughter (who had been inoculated against MMR at birth) and to forego a vaccination for the other daughter completely.
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16 October 2013 by Rosalind English
R (on the application of Maya Evans) v Secretary of State for Defence, with Associated Press intervening [2013] EWHC 3068 (Admin) – read judgment
In “Evans (No. 1)”, a 2010 case concerning the transfer of suspected insurgents for questioning in certain military centres in Afghanistan, the High Court had ruled, partly in an open judgment, partly in closed proceedings, that UK transfers to NDS Kandahar and NDS Lashkar Gah could proceed without risk of ill treatment (which is contrary to UK policy), but that it would be a breach of the policy and therefore unlawful for transfers to be made to NDS Kabul. It was subsequently discovered that there had not been jurisdiction to follow a closed procedure in that case, but what was done could not be undone, so the confidentiality agreements and the closed judgment remained in force.
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15 October 2013 by Rosalind English
Benkharbouche v Embassy of the Republic of Sudan (Jurisdictional Points: State Immunity) [2013] UKEAT 0401_12_0410 4 October 2013 – read judgment
These appeals, heard at the same time, raise the question whether someone employed in the UK by a foreign diplomatic mission as a member of its domestic staff may bring a claim to assert employment rights against the country whose mission it is, despite being met by an assertion of State Immunity under the State Immunity Act 1978. The EAT regarded itself bound by the supremacy of EU law to disapply the SIA, despite the fact that it had no jurisdiction to do so under the 1998 Human Rights Act.
This is the first time that the full force of the rights contained in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms has made itself felt in a domestic dispute between private parties (although the embassies themselves are state institutions, as an employment dispute the matter is one of private law only). If upheld on appeal, this ruling will have consequences that extend far beyond the somewhat esoteric area of the immunity of diplomatic missions, and will make the effect of the Human Rights Act look puny by comparison (as pointed out by Joshua Rozenberg in his post on this case).
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14 October 2013 by Rosalind English
Delfi AS v Estonia (Application no. 64569/09) 10 October 2013 – read judgment
This case concerned the liability of an Internet news portal for offensive comments that were posted by readers below one of its online news articles. The following summary is based on the Strasbourg Court’s press release.
The applicant company owns one of the largest internet news sites in Estonia. In January 2006, Delfi published an article on its webpage about a ferry company. It discussed the company’s decision to change the route its ferries took to certain islands. This had caused ice to break where ice roads could have been made in the near future. As a result, the opening of these roads – a cheaper and faster connection to the islands compared to the ferry services – was postponed for several weeks. Below the article, readers were able to access the comments of other users of the site. Many readers had written highly offensive or threatening posts about the ferry operator and its owner.
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