These catch-all terror laws are killing off British justice

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Simon Jenkins
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/simon_jenkins/article3382269.ece

Slowly, oh so slowly, Britain’s judges are rescuing Britain’s values from the depths to which Tony Blair and his home secretaries plunged them in the knee-jerk response to terrorism. The acts passed by Jack Straw, David Blunkett and Charles Clarke from 2000 onwards did not create a British Guantanamo Bay, but they did signal a shocking collapse in British justice. The present home secretary, Jacqui Smith, wants to further that collapse.

Last week the Court of Appeal handed down two trenchant verdicts in an attempt to inject common sense into nonsensical terror laws. One implicitly demanded an apology and compensation from the government for a wholly innocent airline pilot imprisoned in 2001 after the police and Crown Prosecution Service lied to a court that he was the “lead instructor” of the 9/11 hijackers. He had merely been an Algerian who once trained in Florida. Every shred of evidence appeared to have been fabricated by police in America – possibly obtained under torture – and used without question by the British police.

The pilot was released after five months of being treated as a terrorist in Belmarsh jail, without explanation, apology or even exoneration. His career, reputation and family were in ruins. The appeal court castigated the police and Home Office and told the pilot, in effect, to sue them for all he could get.

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This week the only conclusion I can reach is one I would never have predicted. Thank goodness for judges with the guts to save British values from the present crop of British politicians.

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1. The thing is that the Labour government is going this.

The Conservatives are leary of such power (believe it or not) and that may defeat the Labourites in the next election.