Sanctions on Iraq
http://www.eclipsereview.org/issue13/lawstudent.htmby Eric Herring
University of Bristol
In October 2001, Jo Wilding, now a part-time law student at the University of the West of England (UWE) in Bristol, took pencils, medical supplies and textbooks to Iraq and returned from Iraq with dates, fig jam, date syrup, musical instruments and a few Iraqi dinars in order to raise funds for further humanitarian supplies. The export of such supplies to Iraq is not banned, as humanitarian goods are formally exempt from the sanctions. Importation from Iraq (other than of oil sold via the UN Oil For Food programme in which the UN controls any financial proceeds) of any goods is banned under the sanctions. Wilding did not apply for an export licence to Iraq and she did not declare the Iraqi goods to Customs and Excise until after she had sold many of them. She invited Customs and Exercise to prosecute her in a civil action, which it did, demanding that the courts permit them to dispose of the goods they had seized. The case came to court in Bristol on 2 December 2002 and I, along with more than fifty supporters of Wilding, attended. Wilding chose to defend herself. The Crown solicitor, Sutherland-Williams, was accompanied by a Customs and Excise officer and the Customs and Excise press officer.
The essence of the Crown’s legal case was that she admitted that she had acted contrary to the Statutory Instruments requiring her to have a licence and to not import the goods; that the issue of human rights was not relevant; and that the magistrate was therefore required to grant the request of Customs and Excise. Sutherland-Williams pointed out that if she had applied to the Department for Trade and Industry (DTI) for a licence, it may have been granted, but she did not try to obtain one. The essence of Wilding’s legal case was that the relevant Statutory Instruments are secondary legislation which contravened two pieces of primary UK legislation, namely, the Genocide Act and the Geneva Conventions Act. This meant that the Statutory Instruments were ultra vires and had no legal effect. She therefore demanded the return of her goods. She did not apply for a licence because the issue at stake was not whether she could take those particular items to Iraq. Her argument was that the licensing system within the sanctions as a whole had operated in a way that failed to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe in Iraq and therefore it was in contravention of the Genocide Act and Geneva Conventions Act. In support of her position, she provided a document which she had written which quoted extensively from a variety of sources, including UN documents.
Of course, the law is political, and the politics surfaced quickly. Sutherland-Williams took the position that this was a straightforward case in which the only matter before the court was whether or not Wilding had breached the Statutory Instruments, she admitted she had, and so the court was bound to find in favour of the Crown. However, he spent a great deal of time sneering at Wilding (‘she should summarise her main points if she has any’, ‘any law student could come up with a similar argument by copying it from a textbook’, her submission is ‘riddled with quotes some of which may be taken completely out of context’). He said that ‘We are not here to address political issues’ then immediately added ‘maybe what is happening in Iraq is the responsibility of the regime’. He also managed to find four opportunities to refer to the fact that she was of no fixed abode and living in a variety of squats. The relevance of this to the Statutory Instruments is not obvious: its relevance to the notion that she was not a fit person is. When Wilding began her rebuttal on the basis of her supporting document, he interrupted ‘We’ve read it – do you have anything new to add?’. He initially suggested that Wilding should be restricted to saying things which were not in her documents and then proposed to the magistrate that Wilding should be restricted to offering a summary. This despite the fact that in presenting his case he provided nothing new in addition to his documentation: he read out detail at great length, including information about who she travelled to Iraq with, what route she took, how much her ticket cost, and who drove her from Amman to Baghdad.
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You aren't kidding. The more I find out about her, the more impressed I am. She's a dynamo for the priciples so many of us share here at DU.
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