Tony Blair's comic opera

[Briar]

Tony Blair's comic opera

The government's deportation policy is an affront to both natural
justice and legal justice

Mary Riddell

...

In a democracy famous for protecting liberties, the crackdown is all the weirder. Ten foreign nationals have now been jailed pending deportation and the Lord Chancellor is planning legislation to force judges to give the same weight to national security as to individuals' rights. Though the men have not been named, some, if not most, are said to be the usual suspects. Held in Belmarsh until the Law Lords declared their internment unlawful, this group was subject to the Home Secretary's bitterly fought control orders. Now they may be back at square one.

One, Abu Qatada, is an alleged henchman of Osama bin Laden. Prosecuting him under a panoply of existing laws should not be beyond a system that locks up 12-year-olds for breaching Asbos. Most of the other former Belmarsh inmates were suspected of fund-raising for foreign struggles. The London tube was never in their sights, nor could it now be. One is a double amputee with psychiatric problems. Others are gravely mentally ill or suicidal.

If such broken figures have been jailed again, ministers should be ashamed. Give or take a retired rear admiral from Dorking, Britain can have few less menacing inhabitants than these. But even if the potential deportees are genuine menaces, they should not be facing the fate planned for them.

....

Unease magnifies credulity and erases memories. So remember the human pyramids of Abu Ghraib. Imagine the living carcasses rotting in a Jordanian cell. Sending suspects to such a regime, whatever the promises, would kill some part of Britain that terrorists could never destroy. Like Faustus, we are bartering our soul.


http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,1548852,00.html