Search Results for: prisoners/page/36/ministers have been procrastinating on the issue, fearing that it will prove unpopular with the electorate.
23 November 2011 by Rosalind English
Ali Zaki Mousa v Secretary of State for Defence & Anr [2011] EWCA Civ 133 – read judgment
Philip Havers QC of 1 Crown Office Row represented the respondent secretary of state in this case. He is not the author of this post.
The Court of Appeal has ruled that the Iraq Historic Allegations Team, set up to investigate allegations of ill-treatment of Iraqi detainees by members of the British armed forces, lacked the requisite independence to fulfil the investigatory obligation under Article 3 of the Convention.
The claimant was representative of a group of Iraqis numbering about 100 who brought judicial review proceedings against the Secretary of State for Defence alleging that they were ill-treated in detention in Iraq at various times between 2003 and 2008 by members of the British Armed forces – see our post on the permission hearing.
The so-called “Iraq Historic Allegations Team” (IHAT) was set up to investigate these allegations. The IHAT included members of the General Police Duties Branch, the Special Investigation Branch and the Military Provost Staff. A separate panel, the Iraq Historic Allegations Panel (IHAP), was appointed to ensure the proper and effective handling of information concerning cases subject to investigation by the IHAT and to consider the results of the IHAT’s investigations, with a view to identifying any wider issues which should be brought to the attention of the Ministry of Defence or of ministers personally.
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3 October 2016 by Guest Contributor
Zain Taj Dean v The Lord Advocate and the Scottish Ministers [2016] HCJAC 83 – read judgment
The High Court of Justiciary Appeal Court ruled last week that the extradition of Zain Dean to Taiwan would be incompatible with article 3 of the Convention as a result of the conditions in Taipei prison.
The appellant, a 44-year-old marketing consultant, had been living and working in Taiwan when he was involved in a road traffic accident in which a local delivery driver was killed. He was sentenced to four years in prison by the Taiwanese authorities. He absconded to Scotland and became the subject of Taiwan’s first ever extradition case.
The appeal was lodged under sections 103 and 108 of the Extradition Act 2003. Section 87 of this Act requires the judge to decide whether the person’s extradition would be compatible with Convention rights. The appellant argued that evidence was now available which had not been available at the initial extradition hearing. Under s.104 of the Act, the court may allow the appeal if evidence is available and this evidence would have resulted in the judge at the extradition hearing deciding a question before him differently, resulting in the person’s discharge.
It was therefore for the court to determine whether new evidence suggested that the conditions in which the appellant would be held in Taipei prison were not article 3 compliant.
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1 October 2014 by Guest Contributor
In recent years, a constant feature of debate about the future of the European Court of Human Rights has been the backlog of applications that threatens to engulf it. At its height, in September 2011, this backlog reached the dizzying figure of more than 160,000.
The accumulation of applications has been the basis of the argument both by politicians (such as David Cameron) and figures formerly associated with the Court (such as Luzius Wildhaber) that the Strasbourg system should be fundamentally reformed so that it would deliver far fewer judgments relating only to large-scale violations, structural problems, or important questions of the interpretation and application of the European Convention on Human Rights.
Such reform would mean drastically curtailing the right of individual petition, which for decades has been the cornerstone of the Convention system (and of other regional human rights mechanisms that have emulated the ECHR model). Yet if the backlog was to be significantly reduced – or eliminated – the foundation of the argument that the Court requires root-and-ranch reform to avoid collapse would, by the same token, disappear. Figures presented last week by the Registrar of the Court, Erik Fribergh, suggest that this scenario is now not only possible, but likely.
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4 November 2011 by Adam Wagner
JUSTICE, a law reform and human rights organisation, has today published a significant and wide-ranging critique of state surveillance powers contained in the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA).
The report – Freedom from Suspicion – Surveillance Reform for a Digital Age – is by Eric Metcalfe, former director of JUSTICE and recently returned to practise as a barrister. It reveals some pretty stunning statistics: for example, in total, there have been close to three million decisions taken by public bodies under RIPA in the last decade.
The report is highly critical of the legislation, which it argues is “neither forward-looking nor human rights compliant“. Its “poor drafting has allowed councils to snoop, phone hacking to flourish, privileged conversations to be illegally recorded, and CCTV to spread.” Metcalfe recommends, unsurprisingly, “root-and-branch” reform.
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28 January 2011 by Isabel McArdle
X v Mid Sussex Citizens Advice Bureau [2011] EWCA Civ 28 – Read judgment
The Court of Appeal has ruled that disabled people are not protected by domestic or European legislation against discrimination when they undertake voluntary work.
In this decision the specific question was whether volunteers at Citizens Advice Bureaus are protected from disability discrimination. X, the anonymised claimant, argued that CAB had terminated her role as a volunteer adviser because she had a disability. She claimed that:
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9 September 2011 by Adam Wagner
At odds
Updated | The Commission on a Bill of Rights has published its interim advice to Government on reform of the European Court of Human Rights. It has also published a letter to ministers on reform of the Court.
It is already clear that the Commission has its work cut out because of the strong opposing views of its membership. After the publication of its initial consultation document, one of the Commission’s members, Michael Pinto-Duschinsky instantly said “I strongly regret the terms in which it has been presented.” Now the Commission’s chairman has had to publish a letter alongside its advice so that the views of one member (is it Pinto-Duschinsky again?), that there should be some form of “democratic override” of the court’s decisions, could be incorporated despite them not being agreed to by the other members.
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11 May 2010 by Isabel McArdle
Recent weeks have seen considerable media attention paid to the role of inquests and their increasing significance for relatives of the deceased.
Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights, providing legal protection for everyone’s right to life, in some circumstances requires investigation into a death such as an inquest. It places a duty upon the state to ensure the investigation is properly conducted. This may entail providing funding, such as legal aid given to relatives so they may be represented at the hearing.
On 1 May 2010, The Times published “How coroners have become the public voice of grieving relatives” which considered the trend in recent years for coroners to take a role similar to that taken by a chair of a public inquiry. Frances Gibb wrote that David Ridley, a coroner in an inquest for two soldiers killed in Afghanistan, made comments which will give some comfort to grieving relatives. Only two days earlier, another coroner, David Masters, “castigated US authorities’ failure to cooperate in an investigation into the “friendly fire” deaths of three British soldiers”.
The article goes on to note that
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7 July 2015 by Dominic Ruck Keene
Photo: The Guardian
In Finucane’s (Geraldine) Application [2015] NIQB 57 the Northern Ireland High Court dismissed a challenge to the decision by the British Government to carry out a ‘review’ by Sir Desmond Da Silva rather than a public inquiry into the murder of Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane on 12 February 1989.
Mr Finucane, a Belfast solicitor who had represented a number of high profile IRA and INLA members including Bobby Sands, was murdered in front of his family by loyalist paramilitaries in one of the most notorious killings of the Troubles. His death was mired in controversy due to the collusion between the security forces and his killers. Mr Justice Stephens stated at the outset of his judgment that
It is hard to express in forceful enough terms the appropriate response to the murder, the collusion associated with it, the failure to prevent the murder and the obstruction of some of the investigations into it. Individually and collectively they were abominations which amounted to the most conspicuously bad, glaring and flagrant breach of the obligation of the state to protect the life of its citizen and to ensure the rule of law. There is and can be no attempt at justification.
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31 October 2015 by Jim Duffy
And so, thirteen years after his capture, eight years after the US Government cleared him for release, and seven years after President Obama’s spectacularly broken promise to shut down Guantánamo, Shaker Aamer has left the prison, as innocent as the day he went in.
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16 May 2018 by Rosalind English
“When we leave the EU, we will be able to build on the successes achieved through our membership, and address the failures, to become a world-leading protector of the natural world. We have also published the 25 Year Environment Plan, which sets out this Government’s ambition for this to be the first generation that leaves the environment in a better state than that in which we inherited it. These good intentions must be underpinned by a strengthened governance framework that supports our environmental protection measures and creates new mechanisms to incentivise environmental improvement.”
Michael Gove has announced his plan for a UK Commission on the environment, for which the consultation paper is out now. The paper sets out the principles laid behind the Environmental Principles and Governance Bill which will be published in November this year. This proposed law is said to mark the creation of a “new, world-leading, statutory and independent environmental watchdog to hold government to account on our environmental ambitions and obligations once we have left the EU.”
The proposed Bill may not see the light of day, if today’s events are anything to go by. This afternoon the House of Lords voted (294:244) to include the principles of environmental protection in the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill, rather than introducing a separate piece of primary legislation as set out in this consultation document: the successful amendment is first up here.
However things turn out in the Commons, it is worth attending to the plans for maintaining and enhancing environmental protection in a post-Brexit UK.
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25 January 2021 by Rosalind English
Following my post on the Weimar District Court judgment, here is news from Belgium. This summary of the ruling is from the journal LeVif.
The police tribunal in Brussels issued a judgment on 12 January acquitting a man summoned for non-wearing of a mask, according to his lawyer, Hélène Alexandris. The judge concluded that the enforced wearing of the mask in public space was unconstitutional. Interior Minister Annelies Verlinden said the public prosecutor has appealed against the decision.
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3 October 2014 by Adam Wagner
It turns out that the Prime Minister missed out the really important bits about the Tory plans for human rights reform from his Conference speech. My cautious optimism in my post was entirely misplaced too.
We will be covering the announcements in detail in the coming days, but in the meantime, the full proposals, named, with major chutzpah, Protecting Human Rights in the UK, are here.
My provisional thoughts are below, subject to the qualifier that many of the wackier proposals in this document are highly unlikely to make it through Parliament, even if the Conservative Party wins a majority in the next election. In that sense, this may be more about electoral politics than a solid plan. But for the purpose of this post I will assume the document is a serious proposal and not just a major trolling exercise.
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18 March 2024 by Catherine Churchill
In the UK
The Government has announced a new definition of extremism. Michael Gove, communities secretary, told ministers on Thursday that they should not interact with any groups labelled as extremist or that do not maintain ‘public confidence in government’. While the former definition encompassed ‘vocal or active opposition’, the new definition refers to the ‘promotion or advancement of ideology’. This move away from physical acts into ideas has been criticised as having the potential to infringe on the right to freedom of thought when there is no harmful consequence – Miriam Cates MP warned of its potential to ‘chill speech of people who have perfectly legitimate, harmless views’. Any organisations judged to fall within the remit of the new definition will be excluded from receiving funding or having an audience with any minister. If a group feels that their labelling as extremist is incorrect, they can challenge the ministerial decision before the courts – but there is no process for internal appeal. The chief executive of MEND, one of the organisations mentioned by Mr Gove, told the BBC he would pursue legal action if the organisation was labelled extremist. Brendan Cox, widower of Jo Cox MP, told The Guardian in the wake of the change that ‘extremism deserves to be treated seriously and soberly, not used tactically to seek party political advantage’.
On Wednesday, the House of Commons passed the Post Office (Horizon System) Offences Bill, which automatically quashes the convictions of hundreds of sub-postmasters wrongly convicted as a result of the Horizon IT scandal. This is the first time a piece of legislation has been used in order to vacate convictions en masse. On top of the £179m already paid to those wrongly convicted, a £600,000 lump sum has been made available to sub-postmasters wrongly convicted, and a £75,000 payment was approved for any who, though not convicted, suffered mistreatment. Though the subject of the Bill is uncontroversial, some lawyers have been left feeling uneasy about its methods; legal experts have warned that legislating to overturn convictions threatens to override the judicial process and could set a dangerous precedent.
In wider news
Voting in Russia’s presidential election began on Friday with ballots continuing to be cast over the weekend. Vladimir Putin is standing for his fifth term as president after amendments to the constitution were made in 2020 to allow a candidate to stand for fifth and sixth terms; another term will see him having served 30 years in power. Although a handful of candidates are running against him, others have been disqualified and many consider that those remaining pose no credible threat. Nations have been called upon by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe to refuse to recognise and legitimate the results of this weekend’s election, which has been referred to as a ‘carefully staged legitimisation ritual’.
Five years after the proposal for regulation was first tabled, the EU voted in a plenary session on Wednesday to adopt the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Act, now expected to receive final approval within weeks. The Act categorises the risk level of various programs and imposes stepped restrictions accordingly, including banning any system of AI deemed to pose an ‘unacceptable risk’ (with exemptions for military and national security use). The response to the Bill has been mixed – while many are praising the EU for being the first to create a set of binding regulations on AI, the Act has been criticised both for being too burdensome and stifling competition in the tech sector and for its silence on crucial human rights matters such as biometric mass surveillance and predictive policing. Amnesty International has suggested that the failure of EU lawmakers to ban the export of AI incompatible with the new legislation will allow companies to profit from technologies the Union itself has deemed excessively dangerous and harmful, establishing ‘a dangerous double standard’.
An open letter signed this week by twelve Israeli human rights organisations has accused Israel of ignoring the provisional ruling delivered by the ICJ over the military campaign in Gaza. 25 NGOs have also sent a letter this week to President Joe Biden calling for the United States to end their ‘support for the ongoing catastrophic humanitarian situation’ by terminating the provision of weapons and security assistance. This comes as the President announced a floating pier would be built for aid to access Gaza while President of the EU Commission Ursula von der Leyen announced that a sea corridor would be opened into Gaza to supply food amid fears of an impending famine.
In the courts
On Tuesday, the ECHR published a judgment confirming that the right to conscientiously object to military service is protected by the right to freedom of conscience and religion under Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights and Freedoms. The applicant, Murat Kanatlı, was convicted for refusing to perform compulsory Turkish military service on the grounds that he conscientiously objected. The statutory provisions did not allow him to undertake any other kind of civilian service in substitution, and therefore there was no possibility a fair balance between his interests and the interests of society had been struck. Accordingly, the Court found a breach his rights under Article 9.
Two courts in Japan ruled last week that the country’s ban on same sex marriage was unconstitutional. In separate rulings, the Sapporo High Court ruled that the lack of recognition of same sex marriage in the Civil Code violated the constitution while the Tokyo District Court declared that the ban violated the dignity of the individual and was therefore unconstitutional. These are the latest in a slew of Japanese judgments over the last five years suggesting the that the legislature should recognise same sex marriage in order to honour the rights of citizens. Though polls suggest same sex marriage enjoys support from up to 70% of the population, the government have shown no indication that this is likely to occur in the near future.
Thirty-three Metropolitan police officers are suing the Met for trauma stemming from the Grenfell Tower fire. Civil claims are being pursued for psychiatric injury suffered during the tragic event in 2017 which killed 72 people. Mediation is ongoing and it is hoped an out of court settlement will be reached. The proceedings have commenced against the Met Police after it was announced last month by the Fire Brigades Union that the claims of firefighters responding to the tower fire had been settled for over £20m. It is expected that the second and final report of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry will be published this spring or summer and will inform the Met Police’s decision as to whether to bring criminal charges against any parties, including corporate and gross negligence manslaughter.
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15 July 2019 by Conor Monighan
Conor Monighan brings us the latest updates in human rights law
In the News:
Credit: The Guardian
The House of Commons has passed amendments which are likely to liberalise the law on abortion and same-sex marriages in Northern Ireland.
The amendments were added to the NI Executive Formation Bill. The first was put forward by Conor McGinn (Labour). It states that if the NI Assembly is not restored by the 21st October, the government must create secondary legislation to allow same-sex marriage in Northern Ireland. This means there will be no further debate in the House of Commons, because the government will make use of regulations. The second amendment, tabled by Stella Creasy (Labour), has a similar effect. However, both are subject to the condition that the Northern Irish Assembly can legislate to change the law.
Prior to the vote, Ms Creasy said “At this moment in time, if somebody is raped in Northern Ireland and they become pregnant and they seek a termination, they will face a longer prison sentence than their attacker”.
The Conservative leadership contenders were split on the vote. Boris Johnson stated that both subjects were devolved matters, whilst Jeremy Hunt voted for both proposals. Karen Bradley (the Northern Ireland Secretary) and Theresa May (PM) abstained.
Unusually, MPs in the Scottish National Party were given a free vote. The party ordinarily abstains from voting on devolved issues in other countries.
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6 October 2015 by Guest Contributor
Image credit: Guardian
This week’s round-up is brought to you by Charlotte Bellamy
Instead of reparations and an apology for Britain’s role in the transatlantic slave trade, David Cameron is to bestow Jamaica with £25m (or 40%) towards the cost of a new prison – an offer which is “an insult to the people of Jamaica”, according to Jamaican MP Mike Henry, who had led the effort to force a vote on reparations which took place in the Jamaican Parliament in January and passed unanimously. The motion stated that Jamaica would be entitled to receive reparations equivalent to what former slave owners received after abolition.
Prior to Cameron’s visit, Sir Henry Beckles, the chair of the CARICOM Reparations Commission, called on the PM to acknowledge his responsibility for his share of the situation and to contribute to a “joint programme of rehabilitation and renewal”. He described the PM as “a grandson of the Jamaican soil who has been privileged and enriched by your forebears’ sins of the enslavement of our ancestors”. The Cameron family was said to have reaped “bonanza benefits”. During his visit, however, Cameron announced that financial reparations “were not the right approach”.
Is a UK-subsidised prison the right approach? BBC political correspondent Carole Walker suggested that some eyebrows may be raised by such an allocation of the Foreign Aid budget. Frances Crook, the CEO of the Howard League, has raised not just her eyebrows, but also concerns that building a prison in Jamaica is “not the answer to the UK’s prison problems”, not least because it is “wrong to spend British aid on building a prison” when “refugees in camps are facing winter and the budget is stretched”. In addition, the Jamaican prison would only take 300 men by 2020, when prison numbers in this country are going up by more than 300 every month.
Other news
- In the week that saw the Human Rights Act turn 15, Sir Simon McDonald, the British Foreign Office Chief, inauspiciously commented that human rights are “no longer a top priority” for the Government. Resources will be funnelled into trade deals ahead of fighting injustice in other parts of the world, as part of the Conservatives’ “Prosperity Agenda”, the Independent reports. This perhaps explains George Osborne’s recent silence on human rights abuses during his “trade mission” to China, for which he has been praised by a grateful if somewhat surprised Chinese Government, and criticised by Amnesty International.
- More fuel was thrown on the fire of the UK’s tangled relationship with Saudi Arabia when it emerged last week via leaked Saudi Foreign Ministry files that the UK made a secret deal with the Saudis to bag themselves both countries seats on the UN Human Rights Council in 2013. Saudi Arabia – who has sanctioned more than 100 beheadings this year – now chairs a UNHRC panel that selects senior officials to draft international human rights standards and report violations. Allan Hogarth, Amnesty International UK’s Head of Policy and Government Affairs, described the revelation as “a slap in the face for those beleaguered Saudi activists who already struggle with endemic persecution in the kingdom”.
- The daughter of a man who committed suicide in 2013 after being declared fit to work by an Atos ‘heathcare professional’ is compiling a dossier of information on her father’s case to assist the imminent UN investigation into whether Iain Duncan Smith’s welfare reforms have led to “grave or systematic violations” of disabled people’s rights. This follows a coroner’s conclusion that Mr O’Sullivan’s suicide was a direct result of the outcome of the assessment. The coroner reported found that the Atos healthcare professional (an orthopaedic surgeon in this case) had failed to take into account the views of any of the deceased’s doctors, who had diagnosed him with recurrent depression, panic disorder and agoraphobia.
- The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) has called for “firmer measures” against States ignoring judgments of the Strasbourg Court, urging Council of Europe ministers to make use of the 2010 “infringement procedure” (a tool “as yet untried”) which allows the Court to rule on whether a State has breached its obligation to abide by the Convention. This recommendation was based on a report focused primarily on nine countries responsible for 80 per cent of the 11,000 unimplemented cases (Turkey, the Russian Federation, Ukraine, Romania, Greece, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Ukraine), though the UK received a special mention (Appendix 1, s10) for “unresolved issues” relating to “significant implementation problems” specifically in relation to prisoner voting rights, following Hirst v UK (No 2) and the pilot judgments Greens and MT v UK where the UK’s blanket ban on prisoner voting was found to be a violation of Article 3.
In the Courts
- Bouyid v Belgium: slapping by law enforcement officers of individuals under their control was degrading treatment under Article 3 ECHR. Two brothers had alleged that police officers in Belgium had slapped them in the face whilst at a police station in Brussels. The Court found that this had undermined their dignity. The Court emphasised that in a democratic society ill-treatment was never an appropriate response by the authorities, explaining that “a slap to the face affects the part of the person’s body which expresses his individuality, manifests his social identity and constitutes the centre of his senses”.
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If you have a human rights event you would like to publicise on the UK Human Rights Blog, please email Jim Duffy at jim.duffy@1cor.com
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Ali Zaki Mousa v Secretary of State for Defence & Anr [2011] EWCA Civ 133 – read judgment
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