The article contains some good background for Post 56937 in the context of the UK. While the author is obviously biased against the British security system,it gives some good background on Khalifah elements in the UK. Also, one of the persons interviewed provided a valid scenario for the development of anti-terror legislation and its incorporation into fighting regular crimes. A scenario that is exactly valid and parallel to what is happening in the U.S. Example: Last year anti-terror Patriot Act money laundering law was used as the basis for the investigation of a bribery case in Las Vegas involving, not terrorists, but politicians. Note that the Northern Command, headed by the general (then at NORAD) who failed to stop any of the four terrorist aircraft on 9/11 and was then promoted, has been granted extraordinary powers by Bush43 executive order to overcome Constitutional provisions in the event of a national security emergency. The general is empowered to decide if a NSE is occurring. (Note the emergency security provisions in the UK that are outlined at the end of the article.)
David Bier "Tim Newburn, the director of the Mannheim Centre for the study of criminology at the London School of Economics, wonders how different the new threats are from those we faced before. 'I do think there is an issue about the extent to which we assume the world has changed. I'm not convinced by the arguments that we now face something that we might regard as super-terrorism with a reach and a power and a likelihood of inflicting damage that is completely different from the things we faced before 11 September. Neither do I agree with the even more dystopian picture of entire nation states now under threat from the new terrorist activities. One of the reasons I feel sceptical about those arguments, apart from the lack of evidence, is the relatively recent history of terrorism. What tends to happen is that we are presented with the idea that we face a new and terrible threat, which necessitates the introduction of emergency powers and the expenditure of vast amounts of money, and then in time we face a normalisation of those powers.' This process of normalisation, which concentrates power in the hands of law enforcement agencies, has several distinct features. First, a law introduced as a temporary measure is transformed in due course into a permanent piece of legislation. Second, a symbiotic relationship develops between the ordinary criminal law and emerging legislation as elements of one are incorporated into the other - and the effect is a general tightening up of the statutory criminal law. Finally, emergency powers are used to deal with ordinary crime. Unlike Tamimi, Newburn believes that 'the police services themselves fuel the process. They are a significant player in what we always see under these kinds of circumstance, which is the emergence of a campaign for new legislative powers and new resources. However, I would have to say that they are usually pushing at a fairly open door." http://www.lrb.co.uk/v26/n02/upto01_.html LRB | Vol. 26 No. 2 dated 22 January 2004 | John Upton In the Streets of Londonistan John Upton Perhaps it is the rain. The gaggle of BNP protesters standing behind the crowd-control barrier on Tottenham High Road are very subdued. They are almost to a man - they are all men - overweight, shaven-headed and in their late thirties (think Private Eye's Yobs). They stand rather meekly, as if trying hard to prove their reasonableness. One of them, the oldest, holds a soaking piece of paper in his left hand on which is written a speech, and in his right a megaphone to berate his audience of passers-by and journalists on the other side of the road. 'This is a sovereign nation. These people are committing treason. Why are they not being arrested?' The megaphone squeals with feedback. A man is talking about them on his mobile phone; he laughs openly. The small group of policemen posted outside the industrial estate where al-Muhajiroun are holding a press conference, laugh too. The rain begins to fall even harder; on the kebab shops, on the hairdressers, on the BNP. 'Fucking Pakis,' one of the Yobs says. It is 11 September 2003. I cross the road and ask a policeman where to go for the press briefing. He points in the direction of a checkpoint set up by al-Muhajiroun. Al-Muhajiroun are holding a conference to commemorate the 19 mujahideen who gave their lives for the cause of jihad. I am frisked thoroughly, quickly and professionally by a mountain of a man dressed in a jellaba. He tells me to hurry up the stairs - the briefing may already have started. Upstairs is a large room with whitewashed walls and grey carpet tiles. On one of the walls a banner proclaims that there is no God but God. A panel of young, bearded men are sitting under the banner, facing a semi-circular swathe of TV cameras on tripods and photographers jostling for position. Behind the cameras are two rows of seats, some are occupied by journalists, others by members of al-Muhajiroun. From time to time the journalists take calls on their mobiles or ask whispered questions of the young men next to them who are nodding sagely at the words of their representatives. 'It is easy for you to forget our history. Our history did not begin at 11 September. The USA ploughs money into Israel. In 1998 Sudan was bombed. Atrocities have been committed against Muslims in Chechnya and Afghanistan. Do you have a minute's silence for them? No. You remember only non-Muslims.' The spokesman's voice is distorted by the cheap amplification system. The press do not know what to make of these outspoken, confident fanatics. They are articulate and intelligent. Should they be treated as spokesmen for al-Qaida or as the Islamic equivalent of Monty Python's People's Front of Judea? We are here for the official opening of a conference - not a celebration, they are keen to stress - to commemorate the glorious memory of the 19 men who killed themselves in flying four planes into the Twin Towers, the Pentagon and the ground. 'The world is now split into two camps. It has become clear that there can never be peace with the USA.' 'The Jews are a bunch of murderers and criminals.' The hijackers were 'brave men. They were mujahideen. You might call them cowards but none of you would be willing to sacrifice your lives.' 'Jihad is spreading like wildfire. Constantinople has fallen, Rome is still to come.' Amid the talk of the Great Satan and the Little Satan it emerges that the plan is to hold conferences soon afterwards in Leicester, Manchester and Birmingham. One of the brothers stands prominently at the back of the hall holding a mobile phone. It rings very loudly and the speaker breaks off. The man with the phone walks up and down talking intently in Arabic. Then he shakes his head. 'Well,' he says, 'so much for the great tradition of freedom of speech in this country. We have been refused access to these venues.' There is an amount of eyeball rolling among the press. 'But,' the speaker counters, 'I am pleased to say that there should be a very special guest coming shortly. You are very lucky.' He is referring to Omar Bakri Muhammad, the founder of al-Muhajiroun. 'You must take the message of the mujahideen seriously,' the speaker continues. 'Do not listen to the liars Bush and Blair who say that al-Qaida is finished. We are not spokespersons for al-Qaida but we pray in the same direction.' I notice, at the back of the hall, two men in suits who are not journalists, though one of them holds a notebook. They listen attentively. An American journalist makes her question heard despite the panel's efforts not to acknowledge a woman, let alone an American. 'Are your views born out of anti-semitism?' she asks, and thrusts her microphone forward. 'Jews are an occupying power. They destroy houses, they spoil crops. They should be killed.' The American journalist doesn't give up. 'If I close my eyes,' she says, 'this could be Combat 18 or the BNP talking.' 'Well don't close your eyes then.' All the brothers laugh and the press briefing is over. Our special guest, it transpires, has been detained 'in consultation with his lawyer'. This gets a laugh from the press. The two men who weren't journalists have disappeared. As the press swap notes and check details, I get talking to Ahmed, one of the members of the organisation. Small and bespectacled, he is wearing a knitted cap, denim jacket and jeans. He suggests that we take a seat to one side of the hall. He wants to talk about the Ummah, the worldwide community of believers. Eventually I manage to ask him what he makes of the pair at the back of the hall. 'Police officers,' he says. Does it worry him that they are under surveillance? 'I am not paranoid. Whatever happens is in Allah's hands.' The two men sitting at the back of that hall are as visible as the secret war against Islamist terrorism gets. What they are doing is typical of the hundreds of intelligence-gathering operations taking place in this country today. This is the reality behind Tony Blair's evangelical declaration that 'we . . . here in Britain stand shoulder to shoulder with our American friends in this hour of tragedy, and we, like them, will not rest until this evil is driven from our world.' Shoulder to shoulder is not the physical position that springs to mind when one thinks of the current relation between the United Kingdom and the US. Even in some government circles our relationship to Uncle Sam is seen as that of rent boy rather than special friend. Unthinkingly muscular in intelligence and security matters, the Government fails to acknowledge any distinction in the source and intensity of potential threats, and increasingly identifies any disagreement with its worldview as evidence of the existence of the enemy. This has resulted in 529 people being arrested under the anti-terror legislation since 11 September 2001, only 81 of whom have gone on to be charged. A black cloud of Islamist terror is said to be hanging over the Western world; and specific causes of violence and discontent have disappeared into it. Instead, we promote the idea that all acts of political violence involving Arabs or Muslims, if seen from the correct (that is to say US- inspired) angle, will fit together like a jigsaw to form an image of Osama bin Laden. I meet Mr X in a pub in Whitehall. He works for a branch of government which plays a role in counter-terrorism. He has agreed to speak to me about the way the authorities see the new threat. 'It's been galling for us,' he says, 'that the Americans have discovered terrorism, when of course it's been going on here for years. He sees al-Qaida as 'an irrational force that must be combated, unlike a typical European terrorist organisation, the Baader Meinhof, for example, who always had one eye on their press coverage and popularity ratings'. If this is a war, as the neocons and Blairite hawks would have us believe, it is being fought as much in the realm of ideology and words as in the realm of explosive shoes and ricin laboratories. It is a propaganda war of shadowy unprovables, in which the absence of an attack is claimed as a victory by the police and intelligence services. A war in the course of which the security services will gain and our civil liberties suffer. A war in which the dilemmas of counterterrorist policing have begun to express some of the most sensitive cultural irresolutions in British society. The police and Government want us to believe that our law enforcement agencies are as embattled as the Spartans at Thermopylae, but as members of the Metropolitan Police Special Branch the two men at the al-Muhajiroun briefing are part of an immensely strong, long established and well-resourced structure. They have the use of the most draconian legislation in Europe and a wealth of experience in counter-insurgency policing. They and the five hundred or so others like them at work in London represent a formal tradition of secret political policing which is almost as old as the institution of organised policing itself in Britain. Modern political policing began on Saint Patrick's Day 1883, when four CID men and eight uniformed officers were picked to form the Special Irish Branch, in response to a Fenian bombing campaign on the mainland. In 1888, the word 'Irish' was dropped from the title, and the unit widened its net to include anarchists, left-wing revolutionaries and Indian nationalist sympathisers. During the First World War, Special Branch was closely involved in countering German espionage and formed a relationship with MI5 which remains crucial to the domestic intelligence network, with Special Branch frequently acting as the muscle on security service operations, as well as pursuing subversives in its own right. In 1919, under the Bolshevik-hating Sir Basil Thomson, Special Branch adopted the practice of intimidatory attendance at left-wing gatherings. It comes as no surprise to learn that it was slower off the mark in monitoring right-wing groups. By the outbreak of World War Two, however, these to0 had come under its gaze. Before the war's end, the focus had reverted to the Red threat, and from the 1950s until the end of the Cold War, the Branch spent a huge proportion of its resources and surveillance time monitoring such well-known left-wing subversives as Jack Straw and Peter Mandelson, as well as CND and Vietnam War protesters. More important, from a counter-terrorist perspective, it was deeply involved in the British state's confrontation with modern Irish Republican terrorism. Until 1992, the Met Special Branch had sole responsibility for mainland intelligence on Irish terror (the RUC had its own infamous Special Branch to take care of activity in Northern Ireland), but as the Cold War came to an end, MI5 lobbied successfully to take over this function from the police. By the 1990s, then, Special Branch found itself at a loss. The growth of Islamism, it seemed, was of no interest, despite the granting of asylum in the aftermath of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan to several Islamist militants, which helped London acquire a reputation as a safe-haven for extremists and the nickname 'Londonistan'. Instead, Special Branch lived up to the caricature of the British security establishment, demonstrating a committed hatred of Micks and Reds and an inability to take Rag Heads at all seriously. Everything changed after 11 September; in a remarkably short time, a new orthodoxy on intelligence and law enforcement would be established for an apparently new world. The Centre for the Study of Terrorism is housed in a whitewashed terraced house in St Andrews, a few doors down from the main university buildings. Magnus Ranstorp, a Swede, is the Centre's director. He regularly briefs senior government and security officials overseas and in the UK - among them, Assistant Commissioner David Veness, head of Specialist Operations for the Metropolitan Police, the officer in overall operational charge of countering terror in the United Kingdom. Dr Ranstorp is an expert on Hizbollah, and books such as Palestinian Hamas, Defiant Patriot, The Kidnap Business and the Hostage Rescue Manual cover three walls of his study. Resting on the mantelpiece above a gas fire is an enlarged, slightly blurred photograph of a group of Indian or maybe Sri Lankan soldiers, handguns to the ready, holding a leopard on a chain. It is a military-macho moment that looks entirely sinister. A photograph of a group of American soldiers is propped against a bookshelf. Dressed in riot gear and bunched together, they are hugging the wall of a mudbrick house ready to kick in the door. On the small coffee table next to my seat is a draft of an article entitled: 'Should Hizbollah be next?' With something of the air of the maître-penseur, Dr Ranstorp pulls on a cigarette. 'Surveillance in the UK of Islamists was at best patchy,' he tells me. 'Pre 9/11, most requests for intelligence came from other governments who wanted to monitor their own subversives and, like many governments, the UK doesn't give up its intelligence easily.' France made specific requests about a number of Algerians in exile in London and was refused help by UK law enforcement agencies. Ranstorp finds this especially disturbing, since he believes that France and the UK, of all European countries, were and are at the highest risk of terrorist attack. 'This reluctance to assist was combined with a disproportionate focus on problems relating to Northern Ireland and an almost absolute failure to recruit individuals to tap into the Islamists' inner node.' Dr Ranstorp provides an insight into the view of al-Qaida held by the police and the security services, and helps to make sense of Special Branch's decision to arrest hundreds of Muslims around the country. 'Al-Qaida is an organisation of some sort. The way recruitment generally works is that certain mosques are exploited by "talent spotters" who pick out potential recruits on the basis of two criteria: their perceived level of commitment to the Islamist cause and their skill sets and psychological make-up. To acclimatise the recruits they use propaganda material from the Algerian and Chechen struggles and invite veterans of various conflicts to speak about the necessity of jihad.' Dr Ranstorp goes on to explain the four-stage process by which al-Qaida's jihadists are formed. First, a recruit undergoes spiritual preparation; then he is provided with basic military and survival skills. Following this, it is his duty to place himself at the fault-lines between Islam and the West; the armed struggle comes last. The security service seems to base its strategy on Dr Ranstorp's analysis. As they see it, allegiance to al-Qaida is tested at a low but apparently effective level by having a recruit do something as straightforward as attend early morning prayers for a sustained period. A series of tests of increasing intensity - storing documents, providing accommodation, concealing or smuggling weaponry - forge psychological commitment. With a view of terror so closely bound up with the practice of Islam, it isn't difficult to see the potential for misinterpretation. Not only is any Muslim who commits an ordinary crime inevitably a potential terrorist in the eyes of Special Branch, but any devout Muslim may also come under suspicion. The authorities believe that there is an extremely close relationship between conventional crime and terrorism, which is thought to depend on identity theft, and credit card and bank fraud. Dr Ranstorp confirms this: 'The arrest of al-Qaida suspects has led to the discovery of multiple identities which are extremely difficult to trace. A massive intelligence operation is involved in which ninety countries are co-operating.' Dr Ranstorp and Mr X agree: there is a definite connection between Blunkett's identity-card scheme and counter-terrorism. Like the US neocons, Dr Ranstorp emphasises the Manichean nature of the struggle, a point of view that has many practical advantages, not least in giving Western law enforcement and military organisations a larger-than-life enemy at which to tilt. Al-Qaida is now seen as a strategic innovator of Clausewitzian skill. According to the security services, it is fighting fourth-generation warfare - i.e. attempting to destroy the state from within. I ask Dr Ranstorp about the methods of attack that might be used. 'The danger is weapons not so much of mass destruction as of mass disruption,' he replies. In the Government's eyes, the use of chemical weapons is 'a case of when and not if'. The authorities, it appears, are not unduly worried about high numbers of casualties in the event of a suicide attack: what they fear is the 'psychological ripple effect'. If a plane were to be brought down from outside, say, by a rocket-propelled grenade fired as the plane is taking off or landing, Dr Ranstorp believes 'the psychological effects would be immense' and, he adds, 'an attack of this type may well occur in Europe.' In contingency planning, therefore, addressing the nation immediately and effectively through television, radio and the Internet is no less important than 'the mitigation of physical effects'. Magnus Ranstorp and others like him are well known beyond the law enforcement community. I meet Azzam Tamimi at his office in Cricklewood. Dr Tamimi, a Palestinian, is the director of the Institute of Islamic Political Thought, the author of several books on politics and Islam, and a commentator on Middle Eastern and Arabic affairs. 'Something many Muslims believe,' he tells me, 'is that politicians always want to make out that there is something going on.' (And not just Muslims: the former head of the Joint Intelligence Committee, Sir Rodric Braithwaite, has also spoken of 'overselling'.) 'The threat of terror is extremely exaggerated,' Tamimi continues. 'The police have been trying hard to build bridges with the various communities in the light of 11 September but the politicians make their job a lot more difficult. They put pressure on them because they want something and the police find something else in reality. Take Jack Straw and Tony Blair. They have been very interested in cracking down on Palestinian activism in this country. As far as the security services are concerned, there is nothing wrong with the Palestinians here. The Charity Commissioners came under enormous pressure to close down Interpal, a Palestinian charity, but after a full investigation, it was declared entirely above board.' I ask Dr Tamimi about the idea of al-Qaida held by the law enforcement agencies. 'Al-Qaida has become the emblem for something which is so undefined: who is al-Qaida? And what does al-Qaida consist of? There is an entire industry there.' He is indignant. 'Such and such an operation has "the hallmarks of al-Qaida". They talk of operations in Iraq, for instance. They know nothing about who is doing this, how it is conducted.' Dr Tamimi's view - that the US and Israel are manipulating politicians in this country - is shared by many of the Muslims I speak to. He differs from most of them in believing that the police are to a large extent the victims of a confidence trick, rather than being in on the whole thing from the start. 'Politicians and writers, whether in academia or the media, contribute to the general state of confusion to which the police may be victim.' Dr Tamimi is troubled, too, by the 'sensationalism' that accompanies anti-terror policing. Details are leaked to the media when individuals are detained but the same individuals are released without anybody knowing. His invitation to a Foreign Office conference has been withdrawn: Tamimi understands that this was because he has broadcast on al-Jazeera. 'They hate it that the Arabs have a TV station that is free, where you can express yourself freely.' After I met Azzam Tamimi, Louise Ellman, the Labour MP for Liverpool Riverside, made a speech in Parliament accusing him of anti-semitism, of links with Hamas and of being a supporter of terrorism in general. I got in touch with Tamimi to ask him what he made of her remarks. He accepted that he has informal links with Hamas while denying, predictably enough, the charge of anti-semitism, and saying that the actions of people such as Ellman are attempts to silence anyone sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. We are told that we face a complex, overwhelming threat, yet we are given the crudest means of deciphering our predicament: caricatures of Saddam, of bin Laden, of suicide bombers and evil imams. These are the cartoon ogres in whose shadows we are encouraged to unite. But the spirit of the Blitz engenders acquiescence in the machinations of a manipulative state as well as the courage to stand up to ogres. Tim Newburn, the director of the Mannheim Centre for the study of criminology at the London School of Economics, wonders how different the new threats are from those we faced before. 'I do think there is an issue about the extent to which we assume the world has changed. I'm not convinced by the arguments that we now face something that we might regard as super-terrorism with a reach and a power and a likelihood of inflicting damage that is completely different from the things we faced before 11 September. Neither do I agree with the even more dystopian picture of entire nation states now under threat from the new terrorist activities. One of the reasons I feel sceptical about those arguments, apart from the lack of evidence, is the relatively recent history of terrorism. What tends to happen is that we are presented with the idea that we face a new and terrible threat, which necessitates the introduction of emergency powers and the expenditure of vast amounts of money, and then in time we face a normalisation of those powers.' This process of normalisation, which concentrates power in the hands of law enforcement agencies, has several distinct features. First, a law introduced as a temporary measure is transformed in due course into a permanent piece of legislation. Second, a symbiotic relationship develops between the ordinary criminal law and emerging legislation as elements of one are incorporated into the other - and the effect is a general tightening up of the statutory criminal law. Finally, emergency powers are used to deal with ordinary crime. Unlike Tamimi, Newburn believes that 'the police services themselves fuel the process. They are a significant player in what we always see under these kinds of circumstance, which is the emergence of a campaign for new legislative powers and new resources. However, I would have to say that they are usually pushing at a fairly open door. What is worrying is the absence of any effective opposition to these forms of legislation, even, spectacularly, in the case of New Labour. There are any number of politicians who before 1997 would have been among the most vocal critics of emergency legislation had it been introduced by a Tory Government, but who saw no dangers in the terrorist legislation introduced post 11 September.' The passage of the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 marks a new low for repressive legislation. The bill was published on 12 November 2001 and the Act was made law with great haste on 14 December 2001, prompting a number of observers to wonder whether at least some of its provisions were not simply lifted pre-prepared from the shelf where they had been waiting for some time. The notion of anti-terrorism legislation is founded on a distortion of the criminal law. It makes a distinction between motives - Peter Sutcliffe, the killer of at least 13 people, is not a terrorist; a member of the IRA who kills two is - when the motive for a crime normally should not make any difference to the way it's dealt with. A murder is no less heinous if committed for sexual gratification than for political ends. Nevertheless, the state has for a long time sought to separate politically motivated crimes from ordinary offences, through the establishment of a body of anti-terror laws. This Government has added a further dimension to the UK's anti-terror legislation. Instead of using the criminal law as its basis, it has arrived at the solution of grafting anti-terrorist provisions onto immigration law. This means that there is no duty of disclosure, no legal aid available to the accused - and none of the safeguards provided by the Police and Criminal Evidence Act apply. The checks to the power of the state in the form of due process, available in the criminal justice system, weakened though they might be in the case of terrorist legislation, do not exist at all under immigration law. The Immigration Act of 1971 allowed for the deportation of foreign nationals if they were suspected of endangering national security or committing serious criminal offences. During the 1980s, judges became less deferential to the executive thanks to the new process of Judicial Review which allowed challenges to a Secretary of State's decisions. This applied to immigration cases as to other areas of public law. The exceptions were cases which involved issues of national security. If these dreaded words were cited as a reason for deportation, the courts invariably deferred to the wishes of the Home Secretary. In response to criticism that there was no check on executive power in the majority of immigration cases, tribunals were set up in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In national security cases, however, an immigrant could still be deported solely on the basis of a Home Secretary's certificate. There was no right of appeal: the single check to the Home Secretary's actions were the deliberations of the 'three wise men', a panel who merely examined the papers in a particular case without hearing any testimony from witnesses. Then in 1996 came the Chahal case, a particularly worrying one for immigrants who had resided in the UK for a long period of time without having citizenship. Karamjit Singh Chahal was a Sikh separatist suspected of involvement in a conspiracy to assassinate Rhajiv Gandhi during an official visit to the UK and threatened with deportation. His application to remain in this country failed at every stage because of judicial deference to the will of the executive. Chahal was detained for about a year as his case worked its way through the Judicial Review procedures. Eventually, it was heard in the European Court of Human Rights, where the argument was made on his behalf that there was a real risk of his suffering inhumane and degrading treatment were he to return to India. In these circumstances, deportation by the UK would have been in contravention of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights. It was also argued that the British Government was in breach of Article 5 regarding his continued detention. The Court found in favour of Chahal. The Special Immigration Appeals Commission Act (1997) was introduced in response. Initiated under the Tories but enacted under New Labour, it purported to strike a balance between national security and natural justice in cases such as Chahal's, and a procedural compromise was reached which involved the setting up of special commissions that sat partly in secret and partly in open session. The in camera sessions were intended as an opportunity for the intelligence services and Special Branch to put their case. Not only are the subject of the case and his lawyers not allowed access to the information held about him, they aren't allowed to test the evidence or match its claims against his own experience. Instead, 'special advocates' are appointed by the Attorney General. A special advocate can test the secret evidence to a limited extent but he cannot cross-examine intelligence officers in any meaningful way and he has no instructions from a client or any communication with him. But then the procedure has only one goal: deportation. When the system was being designed, it was considered important that liberal lawyers be included as special advocates. This has led to two problems. First, the lawyers have been seduced by the glamour of the intelligence world, and then, more important, because they have been privy to the closed workings of that world, they are no longer allowed to act for clients. So, in a double whammy, the best barristers have cosied up to the establishment and are not available to represent the individual against the state. 'It is a matter of perennial embarrassment to the Foreign Office that people from Arab countries can't be booted out,' Shami Chakrabarti, the director of Liberty, says. 'This is because of Article 3. These countries - Egypt, Saudi Arabia - lobby the Foreign Office for the return of their nationals. Instead of protesting about the countries' human rights records, the Foreign Office has responded with weasel words because these are countries they are trying to do business with - often arms business. If these foreign nationals were sent back to their country they would face torture and death. This conundrum for the Home Office and Foreign Office came to be known as the Chahal problem.' Then came 11 September and the Government's immediate legislative response. There were scare stories about Britain withdrawing from its commitments under the Human Rights Act. This didn't happen. Instead, 11 September acted as a convenient catalyst for a different course of action, and the Government passed the innovative Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act. The Home Office could finally tackle the Chahal problem. Part IV of the new Act allows the Home Secretary to detain international terrorists indefinitely and without trial. Who qualifies as an international terrorist is, for the purposes of the Act, determined by the Home Secretary's suspicions. A person may also be detained if he is suspected of having 'links' (not defined in the Act) to a terrorist group. So it is possible to be detained merely for being suspected of having links with suspicious people. The subjects of this provision are those foreign nationals, like Chahal, who cannot be removed from the UK because they face the real possibility of torture or death in their home countries - the terms of Article 3 of the European Convention are not negotiable. A state is allowed to derogate from Article 5, however, the right to freedom from arbitrary detention, 'in time of war or other public emergency threatening the life of the nation . . . to the extent required by the exigencies of the situation'. The Government maintains that, since 11 September, this country has been in such a life-threatening situation, although it neglects to mention that the UK is the only country in the European Union that has seen the need to derogate in this manner. The Government has refused to call this process by its real name: internment. Its claim - that, unlike those in Guantanamo Bay, the detainees are perfectly free to leave the country - is a measure of its cynicism. Of the Government's derogation from Article 5, Shami Chakrabarti continues: 'Liberty maintains that it is not a public emergency of the kind the Convention envisages and is completely counterproductive. The flaw in the legislation is that it only applies to foreign nationals. UK nationals cannot be detained under it. What has happened is the same as has happened at Guantanamo Bay - a "Brit Cit" cannot be detained but a foreigner can be interned.' Approximately 16 people have been detained since 14 December 2001, the date the Act received Royal Assent. Before it had even been published there were dawn raids by the police and the Immigration Service. The detainees were immediately taken to Belmarsh high security prison, where they have been denied certain rights: initially, there was no mechanism available to contact a solicitor (it wouldn't have done them much good, there being no publicly available copy of the legislation at the time of their arrests), and on occasion they have not been allowed to use the phone or to pray. One internee was so distressed by the whole process that he chose to return to Algeria, where he will inevitably suffer torture or worse. The Act is described in government circles as forming a 'three-walled prison' because it has this one, awful get-out route. 'Are we going to make the UK safe by locking up 16 people?' Chakrabarti asks. 'People in certain cultures are brought up - wrongly or rightly - to believe that Western liberal democratic values are corrupt and hypocritical. Should we really counter these arguments by locking them up? There's been lots of fuss about Guantanamo Bay but what about this, the moral equivalent of Guantanamo? My largest concern is not the 16 who have been detained: it is the suspension of the rule of law.' A cross-party committee of Privy Counsellors has produced a report which heavily criticises this part of the Act. Bizarrely, the measures they suggest as alternatives would strengthen the repressive power of the state. In place of indefinite detention, the report agrees with the need for a separate body of counter-terrorist legislation - which would inevitably lead to the creation of specialist terror tribunals and the development of a second strand of quasi-criminal law, again without the protections afforded to the ordinary criminal defendant. The committee has also recommended that the ban on the use of intercepted communications as evidence in court be lifted, to make it possible to prosecute more terrorists, and called on the Government to examine whether there is scope for more intensive surveillance to prevent and disrupt terrorism. What the Government would gain from having access to yet more intrusive powers is far from clear - apart of course from the chance of exercising them over the whole population, suspected terrorists or not. The Government's response to the committee's criticism has merely been to repeat that the internment of foreign nationals is still the best available solution to our predicament, that we are indeed in a state of emergency and that Parliament will debate the renewal of the powers in March. Revealingly, one of the Government's private motives for wishing to retain the power of detention is that it doesn't want to be seen by the Americans as going soft on terror by releasing Islamists back into the community. Mr X is sanguine about the Privy Counsellors' disapproval. 'You probably think,' he tells me, 'that this is all a great conspiracy to imprison all the Government's enemies, but you are wrong. This Government couldn't be more sensitive about how it is perceived. It is very conscious that it can't allow terror to change our way of life too much.' He isn't very convincing. A senior security adviser to the Government sums up the situation more plausibly: 'These suspects are disappearing into a black hole with no way of proving their innocence.' With this Act, the Civil Contingencies Bill and the Criminal Justice Bill, the Home Office has, in a very short space of time, produced a compendium of legislation to keep the whole population well and truly in order. The new Civil Contingencies Bill, which would give a government authority to act in the face of terrorist threat or action, replaces powers contained in the Emergency Powers Act 1920, the 1948 Civil Defence Act and the Civil Protection in Peacetime Act 1986. It defines an emergency as 'an event or situation which threatens serious damage to human welfare, the environment or the security of the UK or a part or region'. The state of emergency is to be announced, without initial reference to Parliament, by the Queen making an Order in Council or by declaration of a senior minister. The regulations set down by the Bill contain an awesomely wide range of activities which it would be in the state's power to control. By Clause 21, a government may 'provide for or enable' the requisition or destruction of property (with or without compensation); the prohibition or requirement of movement to or from a specified place; the prohibition of assemblies of specified kinds at specified places or at specified times; the prohibition of travel at specified times; and last but not least, the prohibition of 'other specified activities'. In other words, under these regulations a government can, at a stroke, isolate whole cities, control media outlets, close down telecommunications and email and prevent travel. It could ban protest demonstrations and add at will to the list of activities to be prohibited. Failure to comply with any of the provisions or with a direction or order given under the regulations will be a criminal offence. These powers, which may be used if a government judges there is sufficient threat not only to the nation as a whole but to a part of the nation alone, would be a powerful weapon in any totalitarian state's armoury. Here is the key to the absolute control of the nation that Blunkett, in his lighter moments, must dream of. The second part of this article is available here to subscribers to the LRB. -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? Head on over to our discussion list, [EMAIL PROTECTED] -------------------------- Brooks Isoldi, editor [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.intellnet.org Post message: osint@yahoogroups.com Subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. 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