Terry Waite blasts anti-terror methods

OneWorld UK

By Daniel Nelson

The way the US and Britain are tackling terrorism is entirely wrong, former Lebanon hostage Terry Waite said in London this week.

“It is entirely wrong to incarcerate people when they don’t even know what they are imprisoned for”, he said, in a criticism of the British government’s top secret trials in which neither the accused nor the lawyers are told the exact charges or details of the alleged evidence.

Speaking at an exhibition of artworks made by Muslims detained under Britain’s controversial anti-terror legislation, he expressed “anger and dismay” at some of the terms and conditions under which the artists in the exhibition were held and treated.

But he cautioned: “Let us not allow our anger to turn to bitterness. Let’s turn it into creative channels so that we can begin to make the voice of reason heard in this land again, and we get back to the standards of justice and fair dealing that have been for many years the hallmark of this country.”

Cerie Bullivant, himself once the subject of a “control order” (restrictions on an individual's liberty – often criticised by the courts - designed to get around the provision of to the European Convention on Human Rights), told guests at the opening of the exhibition (Captivated - The Art of the Interned): “To this day I don’t know the basis of my arrest.” (Bullivant absconded for a short time because he said his life had been destroyed by the control order, even though he had not been charged with any crime nor been shown any evidence against him: he handed himself in, and a jury subsequently ruled that he had "reasonable excuse" for flouting the order.)

He described his imprisonment in Belmarsh as “horrifying” and pointed out that a two-tier system was in force there, with different sets of rules for Muslims.

“Two years of my life have been ruined,” he told guests, and he had not yet got his life back on track: “The police are still being vindictive and my health hasn’t returned to normal.”

Buillivant also warned that the government’s plans to extend the time for which people can be held without charge from 28 to 42 days was likely to alienate young Muslims.

Lawrence Archer, the foreman of the jury in the “ricin terror plot” trial of five Algerian men – “where there was no ricin and no plot” - recalled that although four of the accused were found to be innocent, within weeks the government said it wound deport them to Algeria even though it knew they would face a risk of torture.

Solicitor Gareth Peirce, famous for taking on high profile human rights cases, told guests that she hoped that lawyers had not been giving false hopes to detainees by telling them that the rule of law prevailed. Such statements, she said, were now met by a bleak cynicism: “If a person is freed, the law is changed.”

Moazzem Beg, who was detained for years at the US prisons in Bagram in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay said that though 42 days detention without charge was under discussion, “the government already has powers to detain people for eight, nine or 10 years”.

* Captivated - The Art of the Interned, art by men detailed in Belmarsh prison, Together, 12 Old Street, EC1, until 4 July