Search Results for: prisoners/page/36/ministers have been procrastinating on the issue, fearing that it will prove unpopular with the electorate.
21 December 2010 by Matthew Flinn
R (on the application of Daniel Faulkner) v Secretary of State for Justice and Anor [2010] EWCA Civ 1434 – Read Judgment
The Court of Appeal has upheld the appeal of prisoner who spent 10 more months in prison than he should have, due to unjustified delay in having his case heard by the Parole Board. The court found that there had been an infringement of his rights under Article 5(4) of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
In 2001 Daniel Faulkner was convicted of causing grievous bodily harm with intent (an offence under section 18 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861). As this was his second offence of this nature, he was sentenced to custody for life, with the minimum period he had to spend in custody being set at two years, eight and a half months. That period expired on 18th April 2004 and he became eligible for parole.
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7 July 2013 by Sarina Kidd
Welcome back to the UK Human Rights Roundup, your regular Wimbledon Tennis Championship of human rights news and views. The full list of links can be found here. You can also find our table of human rights cases here and previous roundups here. Links compiled by Adam Wagner, post by Sarina Kidd.
This week, Chris Grayling made a concession, the closed material procedure for evidence in civil trials came into effect, and to Theresa May’s delight, Abu Qatada finally left the country.
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21 October 2014 by Rosalind English
The news last week was that the Foreign Secretary has proposed a revival of a fourteenth century statute in order to prosecute British jihadists who travel to Iraq or Syria to fight. Cries of foul are coming from the usual quarters, and there’s even a protest that the Strasbourg Court would object, which, given the current controversy surrounding that tribunal, may be a good reason in itself for such a move.
In the current froth over the Convention versus “home grown” human rights, there is much talk of the Magna Carta. So may be of interest to some that in the opinion of one of the greatest legal scholars in history, Edward Coke, the Statute of Treason had a legal importance second only to that of the “Great Charter of the Liberties of England”, piloted by feudal barons to limit King John’s power in 1215.
Politics aside, how would this work? On the face of it, a law which has been on the statute books for centuries, and is found to be applicable to a current state of affairs, is an equum donatum whose dental health should not be examined too closely. Although the last person to be convicted under the 1351 Treason Act – the Nazi propagandist William Joyce (otherwise known as Lord Haw Haw)- was hanged, now any British citizen convicted of the offence could be given a life sentence.
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29 April 2021 by Caroline Cross
R (Lawal) v Secretary of State for the Home Department (2021), Upper Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber), Unreported, JR/626/2020 (V) — read judgment
The death of an immigration detainee, as with all prisoners, is rightly subject to legal scrutiny. This is because detainees are completely under the state’s control. Article 2 ECHR requires that the state carry out an effective investigation into all deaths in detention where there is a reasonable suspicion that the death was unnatural. A coroner is required to hold an inquest into all deaths in custody, and specifically a jury inquest where there is reason to suspect the death is violent or unnatural.
In this case, a two-judge panel of the Upper Tribunal (President of the Upper Tribunal, Mr Justice Lane, and Upper Tribunal Judge Canavan) found that the respondent Home Secretary had breached her Article 2 procedural obligations in respect of deaths in immigration detention. In particular, she had failed to ensure that crucial witness evidence was secured for use at an inquest and had failed to halt the deportation of a relevant witness.
The facts
Mr Oscar Lucky Okwurime (‘OO’) was a Nigerian national. On 12 September 2019 he was found dead in his room at Harmondsworth Immigration Removal Centre, aged 36. The applicant in these proceedings, Ahmed Lawal, was also a Nigerian national and a good friend of the deceased. He was detained on the same wing at the time of the death.
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26 August 2024 by Emilia Cieslak
In UK news
The Children’s Commissioner for England, Dame Rachel de Souza, has published a report which found that black children are four times more likely to be strip searched compared to national population figures. The report analysed a dataset of all the strip searches conducted by all 44 police forces in England and Wales from January 2018 to June 2023. The report found that in almost half (45%) of the strip searches an appropriate adult was not confirmed to be present and the youngest child searched was eight years old. The majority (88%) of searches were conducted on suspicion of drugs and in 47% of cases the search resulted in “no further action”. The Commissioner argues that this calls into question their necessity and that strip searches should only be carried out on children where there is a clear and immediate risk of harm to themselves or others.
The UN’s Committee on the Elimination of Racism (CERD) has recommended that the UK government “implement comprehensive measures to curb racist hate speech and xenophobic rhetoric, including on the part of political and public figures”. The CERD highlighted the riots which occurred in the UK in August 2024, after the Southport stabbings in which three young girls were killed and emphasised the role of social media disinformation regarding the perpetrator’s identity in stoking the riots. The government has responded to the disorder by activating Operation Early Dawn. This is an emergency action to manage the transfer of prisoners as hundreds of people have been charged for involvement in the riots. Under Operation Early Dawn, defendants will only be summoned to a magistrates court when a cell in the prison estate becomes available, and until then, if they are remanded in custody, they will be held in police station cells.
The Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, has announced new measures to significantly increase the removal of failed asylum seekers. These measures include recruiting 100 specialist intelligence officers to the National Crime Agency to disrupt human smuggling gangs, new measures to target employers who hire illegal workers, and increasing capacity at the Campsfield and Haslar Immigration Removal Centres.
In international news
The Ukrainian Parliament (Verkhovna Rada) has passed legislation to ratify the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) making Ukraine a state party. The Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba has stated that the move shows Ukraine’s “unwavering commitment to strengthening international justice” and to work effectively with the ICC to “ensure comprehensive accountability for all Russian atrocities committed in the course of Russian aggression”. The ratification of the Rome Statute is also a requirement for Ukraine to join the European Union, as set out in the Association Agreement between the European Union and Ukraine. The ICC has so far issued arrest warrants for Vladimir Putin, Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Lvova-Belova, former Minister of Defence Sergei Shoigu, and Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces and First Deputy Minister of Defence Valery Gerasimov.
The UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Alice Jill Edwards, has expressed concern after video footage was leaked of an Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) soldier sexually assaulting a Palestinian detainee. The Special Rapporteur has urged that “all alleged crimes committed within the context of this terrible war must be investigated transparently and impartially, and those responsible held accountable by civilian courts of law”. The Israeli NGO B’tselem has published a report based on the testimonies of 55 Palestinian detainees who described systematic abuses including violence, sexual assault, and denial of medical treatment. As of July 2024, there are 9,623 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons, 4,781 of which are held in “administrative detention” which means they are held without charge.
In the courts
The UK government has lost an appeal against the decision that it cannot restrict the movement of asylum seekers who inadvertently arrived at the Diego Garcia military base. In October 2021, 47 Sri Lankan Tamil asylum seekers, including a number of children, were rescued at sea by the Royal Navy and brought to the military base which is classified as a British overseas territory. Since then they have been restricted to a small area of the island due to the “operational, security, health and safety risks” if they were granted freedom of movement. The court rejected the government’s grounds of appeal, inter alia, that the judge acted unreasonably in failing to place adequate weight on the authorities security concerns. This long-standing litigation has been followed and reported by Joshua Rozenberg KC (hon), and his commentary is available here.
The Federal Court of Australia has determined that Australian case law has consistently held that sex is “changeable and not necessarily binary”. Ms Roxanne Tickle, a trans woman, sued Giggle for Girls, a social media app for communication between women, alleging unlawful gender discrimination when she was barred from having an account on the app. The court held that the claim of indirect gender discrimination succeeds, as to gain access to the app users had to send a selfie and the reviewer determined that Ms Tickle did not have the appearance of a cisgender woman.
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22 May 2011 by Adam Wagner
I asked in a recent post whether journalists need to attend court hearings to report accurately. The post arose from judgment in a family court case involving a mother’s abuse of her baby. The judge took the unusual step of criticising the Sunday Telegraph’s Christopher Booker’s reporting, which he called “unbalanced, inaccurate and just plain wrong“. That criticism was then supported by the most senior family judge in a different judgment.
Christopher Booker has now responded to my post, although somewhat obliquely. He writes:
I was again attacked last week by a prominent legal blogger, for reporting on cases where the system appears to be going tragically wrong, without having sat for days in court to hear “both sides of the story”.
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20 April 2020 by Rosalind English
In this latest episode we consider the probable attitude of the judiciary to any challenges regarding the government’s responsibility for providing sufficient PPE, the risk imposed on individuals, such as prisoners and mental health patients in detention during lockdown, their obligations under Articles 2 and 5 of the European Convention on Human Rights, as well as Article 11. How are we as a society, and the government, going to regard the question of “judicial activism” in this unprecedented situation in a post-pandemic UK?
Here are the statutes, statutory instruments and cases referred to in the course of my interview with Dominic Ruck-Keene and Darragh Coffey:
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24 October 2014 by Guest Contributor
Photo credit: Guardian.co.uk
The Conservative Party’s proposals to introduce a British Bill of Rights and Responsibilities that would weaken the UK’s obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) – and the legal chaos that would ensue if it was ever enacted – have been hotly debated. The proposal makes clear that if the Council of Europe was to reject the UK’s unilateral move, as it would be bound to, the UK ‘would be left with no alternative but to withdraw’ from the Convention.
The policy is highly isolationist. The brief section on the ‘international implications’ of the plan does not pause to consider the impact of withdrawal on the other 46 states on the Council of Europe or the Convention system as a whole. Nor does it address the implications for the UK’s ability to promote human rights and the rule of law in countries with significantly worse human rights records.
This is despite the evident risk of contagion to newer Council of Europe states. The Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, Nils Muižnieks, has argued that if the UK persists in its disrespect for the Strasbourg Court, exemplified by its protracted non-compliance with the judgment on prisoners’ voting rights, this would
… send a strong signal to other member states, some of which would probably follow the UK’s lead and also claim that compliance with certain judgments is not possible, necessary or expedient. That would probably be the beginning of the end of the ECHR system.
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13 January 2020 by Conor Monighan
Conor Monighan brings us the latest updates in human rights law
In the News:
ICCSA, the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, published its report into protecting children who live outside the UK.
It described how there has been “extensive” sexual abuse of children by British nationals whilst abroad. Between 2013 – 2017, 361 UK nationals requested consular assistance between 2013 – 2017 for being arrested for child sex offences. The inquiry suggested this was likely to be a small proportion of offenders committing crimes abroad.
The report highlights the case of Gary Glitter, who was able to travel abroad and abuse vulnerable children even after he had been convicted. Glitter was later sentenced again for abusing two girls, aged 10 and 11, in Vietnam.
ICCSA concluded that travel bans should be imposed more frequently to prevent this behaviour. It noted that Australia bans registered sex offenders from travelling overseas. ICCSA’s report also argued that the burden of proof for imposing travel bans should be reduced, saying that the need for evidence is often overstated by courts and the police.
The inquiry described the global exploitation of children as worth an estimated £27.7 billion, with developing countries being particularly at risk.
The full report can be read here. More from the BBC here.
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24 January 2012 by Adam Wagner
Updated | In the 1939 film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, James Stewart plays a local Boy Rangers leader who becomes a US Senator and, against all odds, triumphs agains the corrupt bureaucrats in Washington. Tomorrow, according to The Sun, “battling” Prime Minister David Cameron will be travelling to Strasbourg in, it would seem, similar style to “tell Euro judges to stop meddling in British justice”.
Meanwhile, back in London, the British president of the European Court of Human Rights launched a preemptive strike on Mr Cameron’s speech in today’s Independent, arguing that the criticism from “senior British politicians” relating to the court’s interference is “simply not borne out by the facts“.
Bratza is right that the us-vs-them narrative is partly the result of mischievous human rights reporting by the press. Recent examples are the Daily Mail’s extravagant claim that the UK loses 3 out of 4 cases in Strasbourg, resting on a partial reading of the court’s statistics, and the Telegraph’s seemingly endless run of articles based on low-level immigration decisions, the latest being: Bigamist wins ‘family life’ human rights case. In that case, the original tribunal knew nothing about his alleged other marriages, so it is hard to see what it shows about human rights defences to deportation decisions, except that a claimant possibly lied in court, was found out and will probably now be deported.
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22 December 2010 by Adam Wagner
Lots of judgements are being released this week as judges tie up their business in time for the holidays. Here is a quick roundup of human rights cases.
More trouble for the LSC tender process
- Hereward & Foster Llp & Anor v The Legal Services Commission [2010] EWHC 3370 (Admin) (21 December 2010) A number of different organisations have attempted to judicially review the much criticised Legal Services Commission tender of publicly funded work, initially the Community Law Partnership and most notably (and successfully), the Law Society. In this case a solicitor has had its permission application refused regarding the LSC’s immigration tender as it was out of time, but the court did find that the “supervisor attendance criteria” imposed by the LSC indirectly discriminated against women as in privileging round-the-clock service, it prejudiced part-time over full-time workers (see para 62 for a summary of the judge’s conclusions). So a partial (moral) victory for the solicitors, with the immigration tender process looking in trouble and vulnerable to future challenges on indirect discrimination grounds.
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21 March 2011 by Guest Contributor
The European Convention
On 8 March 1951, sixty years ago this month, the UK ratified the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Two things are often said about what was expected of the Convention back in 1951.
First, it was only ever intended to establish a system that would protect against the types of severe human rights violations witnessed during the War. Consequently (and secondly), the Convention system was never intended to become what it has today, its Court now sometimes acting like a type of Supreme Court for Europe in the field of human rights.
Both points are relevant to current day debates about the legitimate role of the Strasbourg Court. To what extent then are they accurate?
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10 December 2010 by Adam Wagner
Seal v United Kingdom (Application no. 50330/07) – Read judgment
The European Court of Human Rights has rejected the claim of a man detained by the police for 9 days under mental health law. Despite legislation deliberately making it difficult to sue authorities carrying out mental health functions, the court ruled that the law did not unduly restrict access to the courts.
Although Mr Seal ultimately lost, his claim – and in particular a strong dissenting judgment by Baroness Hale in the House of Lords – highlights the tricky line the state must tread in relation to people with mental health problems in relation to their access to justice.
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20 April 2010 by Adam Wagner
The case of The Queen on the application of Evans v Secretary Of State For Defence is continuing today in the Royal Courts of Justice in London, before Lord Justice Richards and Mr Justice Cranston.
Maya Evans, an activist, is brining a judicial review against the Ministry of Defence in respect of the British Army’s detainee transfer policy in Afghanistan. It is alleged that British forces knew of the torture risks when handing over prisoners to the Afghan security services.
This is the latest in a series of cases where the Government have been criticised in the courts for defence policies in Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2007, the House of Lords (the old Supreme Court) in Al-Skeini effectively opened the door to such claims by foreign nationals by holding that the Human Rights Act applies outside of the UK.
The most notable recent example is the Binyam Mohamed case, where the Court of Appeal heavily criticised the security services. Similar issues in relation to secret evidence appear to have arisen in Evans, with The Guardian reporting:
So concerned is the Ministry of Defence about the challenge to the practice, that it is insisting that evidence it had passed to her lawyers must now be suppressed.
As a result, skeleton argument from her lawyers – a document consisting of an outline of the case – includes a number of passages blacked out at the insistence of the MoD.
Following one long excised passage, the document revealed in court today reads: “The lessons from these shocking events is … investigation by the NDS [Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security] is obviously incapable of providing any satisfaction of the UK’s human rights obligations.”
Read more:
- Our posts on the Binyam Mohamed litigation can be found here, here, and here
- Our case comment on R (Mazin Mumaa Galteth Al Skeini and others) v Secretary of State for Defence
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24 December 2010 by Isabel McArdle
Stellato v Ministry of Justice [2010] EWCA Civ 1435 – Read judgment
The court of appeal has ruled that when a court set a deadline for a prisoner’s release, that deadline could was not lawfully extended simply because a court needed time to hear an appeal against the decision to release him.
In other words, prisoners must be released on time unless a court explicitly rules otherwise. Absent such a ruling, any additional time spent in custody waiting for a hearing will be unlawful detention and could trigger damages.
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R (on the application of Daniel Faulkner) v Secretary of State for Justice and Anor [2010] EWCA Civ 1434 – Read Judgment
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