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Re Deportation Arrests 11 August 2005 -
12-08-2005 |
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Press Statement #3
Re Deportation Arrests 11 August 2005
The seven men we represent who were suddenly arrested yesterday morning have been imprisoned separately as far away as it is possible to place them from their families (those who are married), their lawyers and importantly their doctors, in Long Lartin prison in Worcestershire and Full Sutton prison near York.
One was taken from the psychiatric hospital where he has been an inpatient since his release from Broadmoor Hospital under a Control Order on March 11th of this year. He is one of two men now rearrested who were moved from Belmarsh prison to Broadmoor Hospital in 2004 after three years of indefinite detention had destroyed their sanity. They are at serious risk; we are informed that all of those now detained at Long Lartin prison are on suicide watch. These include a third man who was released from Belmarsh to house arrest in 2004 because he too had been driven into madness by incarceration in prison. All of the detainees are refugees; so too are their families; most are victims of torture.
The Home Office is completely aware of the recent serious psychiatric history of each and the reasons for that history.
The Home Office itself proposed bail on conditions for each of these men in March 2005 even before each man was made the subject of a Control Order. Each man and his family have since then struggled to abide by complicated and severe conditions. No one can possibly suggest that any man is arrested because he has breached those conditions. No one can possibly suggest that any is connected in any way to the incidents in this country that have claimed to be the reason for the measures being taken against them.
Those held in Full Sutton prison have been put into a Special Secure Unit that was closed down a decade ago on the basis it was unfit for human habitation, in particular because it is suffocatingly claustrophobic. Cells in that unit are even smaller than those in Belmarsh prison. The windows look out onto an exercise yard so dark that lights have to be kept on at all times. The unit is literally covered in cobwebs. It remains unfit for humans.
Birnberg Peirce & Partners 12/08/2005
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HOME OFFICE ARRESTS -
11-08-2005 |
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Press Statement - Birnberg Peirce & Partners 11/8/05
A number of men we represent who are the subject of Control Orders were arrested this morning and told that they would be deported. The Home Office did not think it necessary to give a single word of explanation to those individuals as to why this morning they can be safely deported to their respective countries of origin when last night they could not. If there are “memoranda of understanding“ between this country and the brutal regimes from which they have fled, those have not been provided to those men or to us. The men themselves in any event have been throughout today deliberately put out of reach of lawyers who represent them. We do not know where they are and the Home Office will not tell us. We have a strong suspicion that they are deliberately being separated in a number of directions now so as to make access even more problematic.
The 2001 Anti Terrorism Crime and Security Act was introduced for this specific claimed purpose of being able to lock up foreign nationals without trial who with certainty would be tortured or killed if they were deported. If the Home Office claims that it can now rely upon diplomatic assurances from appalling regimes whom it knows, on strong evidence make use of torture, then it does so in the face of universal international rejection of such “assurances”.
Diplomatic assurances that torture will not be used could never be asked of countries that truly guarantee human rights. Such assurances carry no sanction if breached, they are unenforceable, they provide those brutal regimes with an endorsement by our government that they are true democracies and since regimes that use torture regularly subcontract that work, the regimes themselves can claim that rogue torturers operate without state blessing.
The Home Office can not suggest that either of the countries concerned, Algeria or Jordan, has undergone overnight any internal revolution that does away with torture. Jordan and Algeria are at the top of every list of countries known to use the most brutal of forbidden measures. We ourselves believe that even now planes depart on behalf of the USA carrying suspects to detention centres in Jordan that use torture (the appalling practice of “rendition”). We know that in the recent “ricin” prosecution, false evidence was extracted by torture from a detainee in Algeria. That false evidence was thereafter seized upon and given as a justification for this country’s invasion of Iraq.
Each successive claim made by the Home Office during the past three years has contradicted itself. There is thereafter silence as to why the position changes. If it is necessary that these men have to now be arrested, why does the Home Office say in March just before placing them under Control Orders that all could appropriately be on bail? If these men can be safely deported now, why has the Home Office claimed for so years that that was impossible? If it is claimed that recent incidents in this country demand these measures how is it that a number of men, primarily Algerians, come to be rounded up under yet new measures as the usual suspects; is there a single suggestion that can be made that they have in any way participated in or had any connection with recent incidents said to justify recent incidents said to demand these measures?
Ultimately this move risks disenfranchising this country from the international community that guarantees true observance of fundamental human rights. We cannot be part of that community which means abiding by our treaty obligations and trade human beings at will in this way. This is insane and dangerous government at its worse. The Prime Minister is wrong. The rules of the game have not changed. The rules that we pray in aid cannot be changed for the purposes of political grandstanding and he, of all people, as a lawyer, should know that.
Gareth Peirce
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Glatuc |
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Rally against privatisation -
28-06-2001 |
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LB Waltham Forest trade unions TGWU, NUT and UNISON are to ballot their members for strike action against the privatisation of the local Education Department, which provides central services to the borough’s 90 schools. The borough council is planning to contract EduAction to run the Department from September 2001. EduAction, a company formed by Nord Anglia and Amey Construction, well known for its involvement in rail privatisation and PFI schools, is considered by local unions and parents’ groups to be dangerously lacking in depth of educational resources and in adequate understanding of and commitment to equal opportunities. There is a fear that the real aim of the EduAction bid is not merely to make money out of the borough’s education services but to involve the schools in PFI initiatives and in procurement of computer hardware and software – two obvious sources of profit from the education sector for the company’s corporate sponsors.
The unions are balloting their members for two days of strike action, with the announcement of the result due on Wednesday 11 July, the day that the Council will decide whether or not to proceed with the contracting out.
On Wednesday 11 July there will be a march assembling at 4.30pm in the Town Square, Walthamstow High Street, London E17 (nearest tube: Walthamstow Central). The march will go to a rally in the Town Hall, Forest Road, E17, at about 5.45pm. this will be addressed by national and local trade unionists, as well as local parents and head teachers. Everyone is welcome to join in.
Campaign leaflets are available from the contact email address on this site’s home page.
TGWU convenor and GLATUC Secretary Bob Tennant said today (29 June), “The TUC and our own union have come out firmly against the destruction of public services. We must look to the Labour and trade union movement not only to protect workers and the public from poor quality contractors – and EduAction is certainly that – but also from privatisation in itself. At a time when fascist political activity is re-emerging as a force in British politics it is folly to destroy the public services which are the difference between prospects of a decent life and a life on the margins. We are greatly encouraged by the TUC’s initiative.”
The Trade Union Councils’ Annual Conference, meeting last weekend, also took a firm position in support of public services and against fascism.
The TGWU sees this Education Department contract in the light of four other failed contracts with which it has been involved in the borough: Serco’s attempt to run vehicle maintenance, AAH Tyler’s and Service Team’s attempts to run street cleansing and refuse collection and, most recently, ICL’s contract to administer housing benefit. Last week, the Council announced that it was taking the contract away from ICL, a move described by the Deputy Leader of the Council as “a warning about privatisation. It is not a magic solution, even with something relatively straightforward such as this.” The vastly more complex and, in human terms, more sophisticated, Education Department is set to be Waltham Forest’s fifth consecutive failure. |
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