A wink from Belfast to Belmarsh: Neither Sinn Féin nor Islamists ...

[struggle4progress]

... can be damned without evidence

Peter Preston
Monday February 21, 2005
The Guardian

Welcome - same place, more or less same time - to the house of hiatus, the den of dislocation called Westminster. It's tomorrow, and two big moments are coming.
One is for Charles Clarke, the home secretary, feverishly pushing his burden of control orders: bad news for a hundred or so uncharged, untried and unconvicted terrorist suspects, doomed to be shoved aboard planes to north Africa or plonked in the cell of their own front parlours. The other features the Northern Ireland secretary Paul Murphy, wagging his finger at Sinn Féin over a bank's missing £26m. Will he stop their sweeties, put a lid on their expenses box?

Whatever he does, the bearded boys buried in Belmarsh would settle for it in a trice. Fashionable terrorists these days seem to chant the Qur'an not a Hail Mary. But the evidence against the incarcerated Muslims - evidence that will never get near a court - is standard casserole de spook, a hotpot of intelligence reportage, informer finger-pointing, surveillance and telephone tapping. And against Sinn Féin? Well, we wait to see where Friday's Garda raids will take us, but the spooks have their accustomed role in this Irish stew.

Neither Belmarsh nor Belfast, in short, has produced facts that sit snugly with what we call justice. They come bearing allegations that dare not speak their name in open (or any sort of) court. They can be shown to prime ministers or home secretaries under cover of darkness, but that's your lot. <snip>

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,1419042,00.html