Caretakers and community workers are the way to improve safety in deprived communities, not more technology

Not long ago, I was shown around an award-winning housing estate in east London, which was the proud recipient of a Secured by Design (SBD) award. The housing on the gated estate had small windows, reinforced steel doors and grey, aluminium, military-style roofs. The overall effect was oppressive.

High levels of security have come to characterise our public buildings. This is because security has become a prerequisite of planning permission as a result of SBD, which is a design policy that has the blessing of the police. Administered by the Association of Chief Police Officers, SBD is funded by the 480 security companies that sell the goods needed to meet the required standards. The unintended effects that this approach has had on fear and trust in communities are the subject of my forthcoming report, Fortress Britain, from the New Economics Foundation thinktank.

SBD has its roots in the idea of “defensible space”, created by the American architect and town planner Oscar Newman in the early 1970s, as a result of research he carried out in three deprived New York housing projects. His main finding was that “territoriality” created space that could defend itself. By marking out boundaries clearly, residents would feel a sense of ownership over communal spaces and would discourage strangers and opportunistic criminals from entering.

Newman’s considerable influence led to the adoption of Crime Prevention through Environmental Design in the US, the design policy that was imported as SBD into Britain, where it began life as a regional crime reduction initiative in the late 1980s.

Both in the US and in Britain the idea of defensible space was very popular because it provided a simple solution: rather than engaging with complex social relations as the underlying causes of crime, SBD promoted the idea that environmental design was the biggest influence on behaviour.

Today, SBD is based on a combination of defensible space ideas and the purchase of security products, strongly backed by the insurance industry, which provides lower premiums for properties with SBD.

Many of the recommendations, such as the need to provide good locks on windows and doors, are sensible. But the blanket application of SBD standards tends to create a threatening environment, particularly in poorer areas.

For example, in schools and public buildings the first step of SBD is a crime risk assessment, which is about the local area. While high fences, walls or other barriers are a prerequisite for any school, the crime risk assessment will suggest whether additional security measures are necessary. This means that in higher crime areas security is much greater, creating places that have a militarised feel to them. Because higher crime areas tend to be poor, deprived neighbourhoods have become characterised by public buildings, such as council offices, that come with fortress-like levels of security.

Lack of evidence

One of the main reasons for this report was the lack of evidence that installing gates and CCTV created safe, cohesive and trusting communities. Of the few existing studies, an investigation into CCTV by the then Scottish Office found that, while people often believed CCTV would make them feel safer, the opposite turned out to be the case.

My report, which includes a field study carried out on a Peabody Trust housing estate in central London, hopes to add to this slim body of research. Interviews and focus groups were carried out with residents and practitioners working in neighbourhood management, estate services and youth services on Peabody Avenue, an estate where 55 new homes have recently been completed.

What we found independently was that, although increased security, and in particular CCTV, was often very popular with residents, it did not necessarily lead to feelings of increased safety, with residents reporting that the presence of CCTV could instead increase anxiety.

Security measures including gates and internal doors elicited a similar response, with residents illustrating that “defensible space” can increase fear of strangers. “Because of the doors, if you see someone you don’t know, there is an element of ‘Who is this?'” one resident commented. A practitioner added: “The more you secure a block or an estate, the more it gives a message that something is wrong with that estate.”

Incidents of actual crime were barely mentioned. By far the biggest problem was young people hanging around late into the night in the courtyard of the estate, which is surrounded by housing. On a number of occasions the play area had been vandalised. Because the young people in question were either residents or friends of residents, barring access to the estate through the use of gates did not seem sensible. The study suggested that high security was offered as a technical response to a complex social problem, which required a different kind of solution. It was clear that residents felt that “knowing people”, whether it be caretakers, youth workers or each other, was the key to creating trust.

“The physical security measures – such as gating, intercom systems, CCTV – have increased, and the eyes on the ground have been removed. There’s more CCTV, less manpower,” said one practitioner.

…

• Fortress Britain: high security, insecurity and the challenge of preventing harm, by Anna Minton and Jody Aked. Anna Minton is the 1851 Royal Commission in the Built Environment fellow. She is on Radio 4’s Four Thought at 8.45pm on Wednesday

Anna Minton
The Guardian, Tuesday 30 October 2012 17.00 GMT

Find this story at 30 October 2012

© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Closed circuit television camera systems in town and city centres have failed to match their anti-crime expectations, according to a report.

Professor James Ditton, of the Scottish Centre for Criminology, says the cameras have not lived up to their early promise.

After four years of monitoring the monitors, the professor, who led a Scottish Office study into CCTV, has called for an independent watchdog to oversee the use of the technology.

The centre of Glasgow alone is screened day and night by 32 cameras.

“It has been overhyped and I think that is one of the problems,” Prof Ditton told BBC Scotland. “It was allegedly going to give us these magnificent benefits of reducing crime and making the fear of crime diminish to almost nothing.

“Although it probably does have some utility for the police it does not have these wonderful great societal benefits, so we really question whether the benefits it does bring us justify photographing everybody who goes into the city everyday.”

He argued that since the Glasgow cameras were switched on in 1994 crime had fallen more sharply elsewhere than under their gaze.

He said street surveys had shown people do not feel any safer now.

Professor Ditton also said the cameras had not proved cost effective, producing just one arrest every 40 days.

“We were very surprised by the findings. We had done some previous research in Airdrie where CCTV started in Scotland and where we found there was quite a significant fall in crime after the installation of the cameras,” he said.

“To be honest, we expected to find the same in the Glasgow and we were very surprised to find it didn’t really happen.”

The report said there had been no sign of the investment, jobs or visitors it was promised the cameras would generate.

But because CCTV systems are spreading across the country and some have a wide focus, the professor is advocating the creation of an independent watchdog to monitor the way the cameras are used.

‘Vastly overhyped

He said people may begin to question whether they want the police secretly to tape them in public.

“The cameras were so vastly overhyped as a magic bullet cure for everything when they were introduced, that we were all blinded to the fact that this was a small addition in police terms, but a rather large incursion in civil liberty terms,” said Professor Ditton.

Edinburgh city centre CCTV operator Gary Ogilvie responded to the report by insisting on the benefits of the system.

Mr Ogilvie said: “The cameras can cover large areas very quickly.

“We are identifying things which we can get the police travelling to quickly.

“In Edinburgh we have an excellent relationship with the police and we get very good response times.

“This is something the business community in Edinburgh has commented upon – that response times to incidents since CCTV went in have been much improved,” he added.

But a Scottish Executive spokesman said while the government was disappointed with the figures in the research, it still believed CCTV made a significant contribution to cutting crime.

“The Scottish Executive believes that the majority of CCTV schemes help to prevent crime and allay public concerns,” he said.

CCTV ‘fails to cut crime and anxiety’
Doubts on £170m extension plan

Gerard Seenan, Guardian, 15/7/99

Closed circuit television cameras, one of the government’s key weapons in the war against crime, neither reduce crime nor the fear of it, according to one of the most comprehensive investigations carried out on the subject.

A report prepared for the Scottish office concludes that CCTV has not succeeded in making the streets safer or in making people feel safer.

The results follow similar conclusions by researchers in Wales last week, and cast doubt on the government’s decision to spend £170m extending CCTV across Britain.

The research, carried out over a two year period in Glasgow, reveals that in the first year after CCTV was introduced crime rose in the city by 9%. The crime clear-up rate dropped by 4% over the same period.

Jason Ditton, professor of criminology at Sheffield university, who led the research, said he believed the results should open up debate on CCTV and how it was regulated.

“What we have been able to show is that CCTV didn’t reduce crime – if anything it has increased – and it didn’t reduce fear of crime. If anything there was a slight increase in anxiety.”

The researchers surveyed Glaswegians before the CCTV system was set up and found that most said they would feel safer if their city was protected by CCTV.

But after one year of operation, most said they did not feel any safer, and more people said they would avoid the city centre.

Simon Davies, director of the pressure group Privacy International, said the research should prompt a fresh look at the use of CCTV in Britain.

“The claim that people feel safer because of the technology has been clearly shown to be misleading;’ Mr Davies said.

A spokeswoman for the home office said the government had never claimed CCTV was a panacea, but it still had great faith in its usefulness.

The Scottish executive, which received the report, said it would still continue with its expansion of CCTV in Scotland.

“The effect of Closed Circuit Television on recorded crime rates and public concern about crime rates in Glasgow” by Prof. Jason Ditton is published by the Scottish Office, ISBN 07480 85416.

Find this story at 14 July 1999

BBC Online, Wednesday, July 14, 1999 Published at 12:52 GMT 13:52 UK

The Rendition Project is funded by the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), and accredited under the Global Uncertainties programme. It examines the ways in which the Bush administration developed a global system of detention sites, linked by the covert transfer of detainees across state borders. The system has, at its core, three interrelated practices which violate international law and human rights norms.

First, the secret detention of terror suspects, where the US and its allies have held people in undisclosed locations around the world. Not all detainees held in the ‘War on Terror’ have been held in secret, but those that have were denied access by third parties (such as lawyers, family members, or the International Committee of the Red Cross), with their fate and whereabouts, and even the very fact of their detention, remaining unacknowledged by the detaining authorities.

Second, the rendition of terror suspects between detention facilities in different parts of the world, where rendition refers to the extra-legal transfer of suspects across state borders. Although rendition has been used by the US in the past to bring suspects before the rule of law (so-called ‘rendition to justice’), in the ‘War on Terror’ these detainee transfers were designed specifically to keep suspects outside of the rule of law.

Third, the cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of suspects during detention and transfer, including the use by US and allied forces of practices that amount to torture.

During the Bush administration, the secret detention of terror suspects took place within a network of US-run facilities, overseen by the Pentagon and CIA. Supplementing these were a series of pre-existing detention sites, centred in North Africa and the Middle East, which are run by foreign security forces known to regularly use torture, but to which the CIA had direct access. This form of ‘proxy detention’ can facilitate more extreme treatment of detainees, as the plausible deniability of US involvement in torture is easier to maintain.

Aims of the Project

The Rendition Project aims to analyse the emergence, development and operation of the global system of rendition and secret detention in the years since 9/11. In doing so, it aims to bring together as much of the publicly-available information as possible on the detainees who have been held in secret, the detention sites in which they have been held, and the methods and timings of their transfers.

With this data in place, we will seek to identify specific ‘key moments’ that have shaped the operation of rendition and secret detention, both regionally and in a global context. We are particularly interested in the contest between the executive, the judiciary, and the human rights community (comprising human rights lawyers, human rights NGOs, and some academics), over whether and how domestic and international law applies to those detainees held within the system. A key aim of the project is therefore to identify how rendition and secret detention have evolved within the context of this struggle to defend basic human rights.

The Rendition Project also examines the ways in which this system has evolved over time, including during the Obama administration. While President Obama has ordered the closure of CIA-run secret prisons (the so-called ‘black sites’), and revoked authorisation for use by US agents of ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’, many thousands of detainees in the ‘War on Terror’ continue to be held beyond the bounds of US and international law. Moreover, continued rendition and proxy detention have not been ruled out by the US Government, and may still form a central plank of counterterrorism policy.

Find this story at 2012

US-Led Abuse and Rendition of Opponents to Gaddafi’s Libya

This report is based on interviews conducted in Libya with 14 former detainees, most of whom belonged to an armed Islamist group that had worked to overthrow Gaddafi for 20 years. Many members of the group, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), joined the NATO-backed anti-Gaddafi rebels in the 2011 conflict. Some of those who were rendered and allegedly tortured in US custody now hold key leadership and political positions in the country.

Download the full report (PDF, 8.62 MB)
Appendix I: Tripoli Documents (PDF, 4.98 MB)
Appendix II: Shoroeiya Drawings (PDF, 411.61 KB)

© Copyright 2012, Human Rights Watch

New Accounts of Waterboarding, Other Water Torture, Abuses in Secret Prisons

A file folder found after the fall of Tripoli in a building belonging to the Libyan external security services containing faxes and memos between the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Libyan Intelligence Service.

Not only did the US deliver Gaddafi to his enemies on a silver platter but it seems the CIA tortured many of them first. The scope of Bush administration abuse appears far broader than previously acknowledged and underscores the importance of opening up a full-scale inquiry into what happened.
Laura Pitter, counterterrorism advisor

(Washington) – The United States government during the Bush administration tortured opponents of Muammar Gaddafi, then transferred them to mistreatment in Libya, according to accounts by former detainees and recently uncovered CIA and UK Secret Service documents, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. One former detainee alleged he was waterboarded and another described a similar form of water torture, contradicting claims by Bush administration officials that only three men in US custody had been waterboarded.

The 154-page report, “Delivered into Enemy Hands: US-Led Abuse and Rendition of Opponents to Gaddafi’s Libya,” is based on interviews conducted in Libya with 14 former detainees, most of whom belonged to an armed Islamist group that had worked to overthrow Gaddafi for 20 years. Many members of the group, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), joined the NATO-backed anti-Gaddafi rebels in the 2011 conflict. Some of those who were rendered and allegedly tortured in US custody now hold key leadership and political positions in the country.

“Not only did the US deliver Gaddafi his enemies on a silver platter but it seems the CIA tortured many of them first,” said Laura Pitter, counterterrorism advisor at Human Rights Watch and author of the report. “The scope of Bush administration abuse appears far broader than previously acknowledged and underscores the importance of opening up a full-scale inquiry into what happened.”

The report is also based on documents – some of which are being made public for the first time – that Human Rights Watch found abandoned, on September 3, 2011, in the offices of former Libyan intelligence chief Musa Kusa after Tripoli fell to rebel forces.

The interviews and documents establish that, following the September 11, 2001 attacks, the US, with aid from the United Kingdom (UK) and countries in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia, arrested and held without charge a number of LIFG members living outside Libya, and eventually rendered them to the Libyan government.

The report also describes serious abuses that five of the former LIFG members said they experienced at two US-run detention facilities in Afghanistan, most likely operated by the CIA. They include new allegations of waterboarding and other water torture. The details are consistent with the few other first-hand accounts about the same US-run facilities.

Other abuses reported by these former detainees include being chained to walls naked –sometimes while diapered – in pitch black, windowless cells, for weeks or months; restrained in painful stress positions for long periods, forced into cramped spaces; beaten and slammed into walls; kept indoors for nearly five months without the ability to bathe; and denied sleep by continuous, very loud Western music.

“I spent three months getting interrogated heavily during the first period and they gave me a different type of torture every day. Sometimes they used water, sometimes not.… Sometimes they stripped me naked and sometimes they left me clothed,” said Khalid al-Sharif, who asserted he was held for two years in two different US-run detention centers believed to be operated by the CIA in Afghanistan. Al-Sharif is now head of the Libyan National Guard. One of his responsibilities is providing security for facilities holding Libya’s high-value detainees.

The Libyan detainee accounts in the Human Rights Watch report had previously gone largely undocumented because most of those returned to Libya were locked up in Libyan prisons until last year, when Libya’s civil unrest led to their release. And the US government has been unwilling to make public the details about its secret CIA detention facilities. The accounts of former detainees, the CIA documents found in Libya, and some declassified US government memos have shed new light on US detention practices under the Bush administration but also highlighted the vast amount of information that still remains secret.

Despite overwhelming evidence of numerous and systematic abuses of detainees in US custody since the September 11 attacks, the US has yet to hold a single senior official accountable. Only a few low-ranking enlisted military personnel have been punished.

On August 30, 2012, US Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the only criminal investigation the Department of Justice had undertaken into alleged abuses in CIA custody, headed by special prosecutor John Durham, would be closed without anyone being criminally charged. Holder had already narrowed the scope of Durham’s investigation on June 30, 2011, limiting it from the original investigation into the 101 people believed to have been in CIA custody to the cases of only two individuals.

In both cases, the detainees had died, one in Afghanistan and another in Iraq. The inquiry was also limited in that it looked only into abuses that went beyond what the Bush administration had authorized. It could not cover acts of torture, such as waterboarding, and other ill-treatment that Bush administration lawyers had approved, even if the acts violated domestic and international law.

“The stories of the Libyans held by the US and then sent to Libya make clear that detainee abuse, including mistreatment not necessarily specifically authorized by Bush administration officials, was far-reaching,” Pitter said. “The closure of the Durham investigation, without any charges, sends a message that abuse like that suffered by the Libyan detainees will continue to be tolerated.”

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) has spent three years researching the CIA’s detention and interrogation program and is nearing completion of a report. Human Rights Watch called on the SSCI to promptly release its report upon completion with as few redactions as possible, and to recommend that an independent, non-partisan commission investigate all aspects of US policy relating to detainee treatment.

“The US government continues to demand, and rightly so, that countries from Libya to Syria to Bahrain hold accountable officials responsible for serious human rights abuses, including torture,” Pitter said. “Those calls would carry a lot more weight if it wasn’t simultaneously shielding former US officials who authorized torture from any form of accountability.”

Since the fall of the Gaddafi government, US diplomats and members of Congress have met with some of the former CIA prisoners now in Libya, and the US has supported efforts by the Libyan government and civil society to overcome the legacy of their country’s authoritarian past. Human Rights Watch urged the US government to acknowledge its own past role in abuses and in helping Gaddafi round up his exiled opponents, to provide redress to the victims, and to prosecute those responsible for their alleged torture in US custody.

One previously reported case for which Human Rights Watch uncovered some new information is that of Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi. The Bush administration had helped to justify the 2003 Iraq invasion by relying on statements that al-Libi made during his abuse and mistreatment in CIA custody. The CIA has acknowledged that these statements were unreliable. Years later, the US rendered al-Libi to Libya, where he died in prison in May 2009. Accounts from al-Libi’s fellow detainees in Afghanistan and Libya, information from his family, and photos seen by Human Rights Watch apparently taken of him the day he died, provide insight into his treatment and death, which Libyan authorities claim was a suicide.

Scores of the documents that Human Rights Watch uncovered in Libya also show a high level of cooperation between the Gaddafi government in Libya and US and the UK in the renditions discussed in the report.

The US played the most extensive role in the renditions back to Libya. But other countries, notably the UK, were also involved, even though these governments knew and recognized that torture was common during Gaddafi’s rule. Countries linked to the accounts about renditions include: Afghanistan, Chad, China and Hong Kong, Malaysia, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, the Netherlands, Pakistan, Sudan, Thailand, and the UK. Interviewees alleged that personnel in some of these countries also abused them prior to transferring them back to Libya.

International law binding on the US and other countries prohibits torture and other ill-treatment in all circumstances, and forbids transferring people to countries in which they face a serious risk of torture or persecution.

“The involvement of many countries in the abuse of Gaddafi’s enemies suggests that the tentacles of the US detention and interrogation program reached far beyond what was previously known,” Pitter said. “The US and other governments that assisted in detainee abuse should offer a full accounting of their role.”

*A previous version of this press release incorrectly stated that the SSCI had completed its report. The report is nearing completion.

© 2011 Tim Grucza

Find this story at 6 September 2012

© Copyright 2012, Human Rights Watch

Yunus Rahmatullah has been imprisoned since he was handed by the SAS to US forces in 2004, but has never been charged

Undated Reprieve handout photo of Yunus Rahmatullah. Photograph: Reprieve/PA

Human rights campaigners have called for a full criminal investigation into the rendition of a Pakistani man by UK and US forces to Afghanistan, following a supreme court judgment describing his subsequent detention at the notorious US prison at Bagram as unlawful. Yunus Rahmatullah has been imprisoned ever since he was handed over by the SAS to American forces in Iraq in 2004, and has never been charged.

Lawyers for the man argued before the UK’s highest court that the government should apply pressure on the US to release him. The court of appeal had previously issued a writ of habeas corpus – an ancient law that demands a prisoner is released from unlawful detention – requiring the UK to seek Rahmatullah’s return or at least demonstrate why it could not. However, the US authorities refused to cooperate, arguing that they would discuss Rahmatullah’s situation with the Pakistani government.

Lawyers for William Hague and Philip Hammond, the foreign and defence secretaries, had argued that they had no power “to direct the US” to release him and that it would be inappropriate for the courts to instruct them to ask the US authorities to return Rahmatullah.

Rejecting this argument, a panel of seven supreme court judges ruled that the UK did not need to have actual custody to exercise control over his release. The UK’s most senior judges also declared that there was clear evidence that Rahmatullah’s rendition and detention was a breach of international human rights law, despite “memorandums of understanding” Britain had agreed with the US over treatment of detainees.

Lord Kerr said: “The, presumably forcible, transfer of Mr Rahmatullah from Iraq to Afghanistan is, at least prima facie, a breach of article 49 [of the fourth Geneva Convention]. On that account alone, his continued detention post-transfer is unlawful.”

Kerr also said that he would have “little hesitation in dismissing” arguments from former US assistant attorney general Jack Goldsmith asserting that al-Qaida operatives found in occupied Iraq were excluded from protection under the Geneva Conventions during armed conflict.

However, the court was split 5-2 in a decision to reject arguments by Rahmatullah’s lawyers that there was more that the UK government could do following the American’s refusal to respond to the habeas corpus writ. Rahmatullah was represented by legal charity Reprieve and solicitors Leigh Day, who argued that the UK should have made more effort to demand his release.

In a dissenting judgment, Lady Hale and Lord Carnwath said: “Where liberty is at stake, it is not the court’s job to speculate as to the political sensitivities which may be in play.”

Reprieve’s director, Clive Stafford Smith, said: “This powerful supreme court decision has huge ramifications. Clearly there will now have to be a full criminal investigation. But if the US has ‘dishonoured’ its commitment to the UK in this case for the first time in 150 years, and continues to violate law as basic as the Geneva conventions, this also throws other extradition agreements with the UK into doubt.”

Reprieve’s legal director, Kat Craig, added: “The UK government has nowhere left to turn. The highest court in the country has expressed serious concerns that grave war crimes may have been committed as a result of which a police investigation must be initiated without delay.”

Yunus Rahmatullah and Amanatullah Ali, both Pakistani men, are suspected of having travelled to Iraq to fight for al-Qaida. MI6 is understood to have tracked them as they travelled across Iran and into Iraq early in 2004. After they settled into a house in southern Baghdad a decision was taken to raid the building.

…

Maya Wolfe-Robinson and Ian Cobain
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 31 October 2012 14.59 GMT

Find this story at 31 October 2012

© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Chris Kitchen calls for IPCC to widen investigation into alleged cover-up over framing of 95 picketing miners in 1984 strikes

A picket injured during clashes with police at the Orgreave plant in 1984. The NUM is calling for investigations into South Yorkshire police cover-ups over framing of miners. Photograph: PA Archive/Press Association Ima

The police complaints watchdog is under pressure to widen its investigation into alleged fabrication of evidence by South Yorkshire officers in the 1980s as new allegations emerge of attempts to frame miners at the Orgreave coking plant clashes.

Chris Kitchen, general secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers, said the Independent Police Complaints Commission and the director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer QC, should include in their examination of South Yorkshire police’s post-Hillsborough “cover-up” the force’s alleged framing of 95 miners for serious criminal offences after Orgreave.

“Many miners were subjected to malpractice during the strike by South Yorkshire police – and other forces,” Kitchen told the Guardian. “I will be asking the NUM’s national executive committee to consider complaining to the IPCC and DPP for the police operations at Orgreave and elsewhere during the strike to be investigated, now the details of what South Yorkshire police did at Hillsborough have been revealed.”

At Orgreave in 1984, police officers on horseback and on foot were filmed beating picketing miners with truncheons, but South Yorkshire police claimed the miners had attacked them first, and prosecuted 95 men for riot and unlawful assembly, which carried potential life sentences. All 95 were acquitted after the prosecution case collapsed following revelations in court that police officers’ statements had been dictated to them in order to establish evidence of a riot, and one officer’s signature on a statement had been forged.

On Monday night, a BBC1 Inside Out documentary, to be broadcast in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, features a retired police inspector who was on duty at Orgreave, Norman Taylor, recalling that he and other officers had parts of their statements dictated to them. “I recall this policeman in plain clothes mentioning that he had a good idea of what had happened. And that there was a preamble to set the scene,” Taylor told the programme. “He was reading from some paper, a paragraph or so. And he asked the people who were there to use that as their starting paragraph.”

Taylor said the paragraph was “basically the time and date, the name of the place”.

However, a barrister specialising in criminal trials, Mark George QC, analysed 40 police officers’ Orgreave statements, and found that many contained identical descriptions of alleged disorder by the miners. To prove the offence of riot, the prosecution has to establish a scene of general disorder within which a defendant committed a particular act, for example throwing a stone, which would otherwise carry a much lesser charge.

George found that 34 officers’ statements, supposed to have been compiled separately, used the identical phrase: “Periodically there was missile throwing from the back of the pickets.”

One paragraph, of four full sentences, was identical word for word in 22 separate statements. It described an alleged charge by miners, including the phrase: “There was however a continual barrage of missiles.”

Michael Mansfield QC, who defended three of the acquitted miners, described South Yorkshire police’s evidence then as “the biggest frame-up ever”. He is now acting for the Hillsborough Family Support Group, which has campaigned since the 1989 disaster for the South Yorkshire police officers responsible on the day – and those responsible for the scheme afterwards to blame the disaster on the fans, which Mansfield labels a cover-up – to be held accountable. “South Yorkshire police operated a culture of fabricating evidence with impunity, which was not reformed after Orgreave, and allowed to continue to Hillsborough five years later,” Mansfield said. “The current investigations by the IPCC and DPP into the force’s malpractice related to Hillsborough should include other malpractice by the same force at the time.”

South Yorkshire police paid £425,000 in 1991 to settle civil actions brought by 39 miners for what happened at and after Orgreave, including for assault, wrongful arrest and malicious prosecution, but no police officer was ever disciplined for any misconduct. The operation and prosecutions were given unqualified backing, even after they collapsed, by the chief constable, Peter Wright. Last month, the Hillsborough Independent Panel’s report revealed that Wright personally oversaw the South Yorkshire police operation to blame supporters for the 1989 Hillsborough disaster, including by briefing false stories to the media, and the wholesale changing of junior officers’ statements.

The IPCC announced on 12 October that South Yorkshire police had referred its conduct at and after Hillsborough to the IPCC for possible misconduct and criminal offences, including perverting the course of justice and perjury. Starmer announced that he would examine all the evidence brought to him to consider whether criminal charges should be brought.

On the collapsed prosecutions after Orgreave, South Yorkshire police told the Guardian in a statement: “We note the NUM’s intention and will await any decision from the IPCC. As always, SYP will co-operate fully with the IPCC in whatever it does. The force is not aware of any adverse comment about the [police] statements from the trial judge in the [Orgreave] case. If concerns existed then normal practice would have been for the judge to raise them at the time.”

David Conn
The Guardian, Sunday 21 October 2012 18.53 BST

Find this story at 21 October 2012

© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Disclosure in first report of prisons inspector on UK Border Agency’s ‘family-friendly’ Cedars unit near Gatwick

G4S staff manage security and the facilities at Cedars, the UK Border Agency’s holding centre near Gatwick for families facing deportation. Photograph: David Jones/PA

A pregnant woman in a wheelchair was tipped up and had her feet held by staff from G4S, the firm behind the Olympics security shambles, as she was forcibly removed from the country. The disclosure comes in the first report into conditions at a new centre designed to hold families facing deportation from the UK.

Nick Hardwick, the chief inspector of prisons, and his team made an unannounced inspection of Cedars, the UK Border Agency’s new pre-departure accommodation near Gatwick, where families are housed for the final 72 hours before they are removed from the UK.

Nick Clegg promised in the Liberal Democrats’ 2010 manifesto that he would put an end to the detention of children. Replacing the controversial Yarl’s Wood detention centre with Cedars was at the heart of the coalition’s family-friendly removal policy.

Hardwick said the unit is “an exceptional facility [which] has many practices which should be replicated in other areas of detention.”

“It is to the considerable credit of staff at Cedars that children held were, in general, happily occupied and that parents were able to concentrate on communication with solicitors, family and friends,” he added.

But inspectors also said unacceptable force was used when a pregnant woman was given a wheelchair in the departures area. When she resisted “substantial force” was used by G4S staff and the wheelchair “was tipped up with staff holding her feet”.

“At one point she slipped down from the chair and the risk of injury to the unborn child was significant,” the report said. “There is no safe way to use force against a pregnant woman, and to initiate it for the purpose of removal is to take an unacceptable risk.”

Inspectors also reported that although most work from family escort staff was commendable, they “observed unprofessional behaviour by an officer on a different escort in the hearing of children”.

The report also said that although “considerable efforts were made to avoid force at the point of removal, it had been used against six of the 39 families going through Cedars”.

Judith Dennis, policy officer at the Refugee Council, said: “The numbers of children in detention are increasing. The government acknowledged then how harmful this practice is for children, so why are they still continuing to do it?

…

Amelia Hill
The Guardian, Tuesday 23 October 2012

Find this story at 23 October 2012
© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Meeting at British embassy in US raises questions about repeated denials by MI5 and MI6 of connivance in torture

Within days of the 9/11 attacks on the US, the CIA told British intelligence officers of its plans to abduct al-Qaida suspects and fly them to secret prisons where they would be systematically abused.

The meeting, at the British embassy in Washington, is disclosed in a forthcoming book by the Guardian journalist Ian Cobain. It raises serious questions about repeated claims by senior MI5 and MI6 officers that they were slow to appreciate the US response to the attacks, and never connived in torture.

The meeting signalled to British officials that the US was preparing to embark on a global kidnapping programme which became known as extraordinary rendition. Cobain reveals that at the end of a three-hour presentation by Cofer Black, President George Bush’s top counter-terrorist adviser, Mark Allen – his opposite number in MI6 – commented that it all sounded “rather bloodcurdling”.

A few weeks later, in early October 2001, at a secret meeting at Nato headquarters in Brussels, US officials drew up a list of “necessary measures to increase security”, Cobain discloses. They included flights to and from secret prisons in Asia, Africa, and throughout Europe. “Quietly, Britain pledged logistics support for the rendition programme, which resulted in the CIA’s Gulfstream V and other jets becoming frequent visitors to British airports en route to the agency’s secret prisons,” writes Cobain.

Over the next four years CIA rendition flights used British airports at least 210 times. The book reveals that Washington asked the UK for permission to build a large prison on Diego Garcia, the British territory in the Indian Ocean where the US has a large bomber base. The project was dropped, for logistical rather than legal reasons.

However, Diego Garcia was used as a stopover for CIA flights taking detainees to secret prisons around the world. And in secret memos, Labour ministers said in early 2002 that their “preferred option” was to render British nationals to Guantánamo Bay, Cobain records. MI5 and MI6 officers carried out around 100 interrogations at the US prison on Cuba between 2002 and 2004.

Yet for years ministers emphatically denied any British involvement in America’s rendition programme. As late as December 2005, Jack Straw, then foreign secretary, was telling MPs there was “simply no truth in the claims that the United Kingdom has been involved in rendition”. Just a year earlier, we now know, MI6 – under Straw’s watch and with the blessing of ministers, officials say – helped to render two leading Libyan dissidents to Muammar Gaddafi’s secret police.

Despite the post-9/11 Washington embassy and Nato meetings, and other evidence of their early involvement in rendition, MI5 and MI6 witnesses told the parliamentary intelligence and security committee (ISC) that it was some time before they knew what the US was up to. As late as July 2007, the misinformed ISC stated in a report on rendition that MI5 and MI6 “were … slow to detect the emerging pattern of renditions to detention”.

…

Richard Norton-Taylor
guardian.co.uk, Monday 22 October 2012 13.06 BST

Find this story at 22 October 2012

© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Police will seek to interview Sir Mark Allen, the former head of MI6’s counterterrorism unit, in connection with allegations of British complicity in the rendition to Libya and torture of two Libyan dissidents, Abdel Hakim Belhadj and Sami al-Saadi, during the Gaddafi era. Sir Mark suffered a stroke in July, and it is understood Metropolitan Police detectives were told that he was not fit enough at that stage to be interviewed over the allegations.

The two men, members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, were subjected to years of imprisonment and torture after they were returned to Libya in 2004.

Sir Mark’s health had improved sufficiently for him to address an audience of energy experts at Chatham House, London, last week. A spokeswoman for the British Institute of Energy Economics (BIEE), which organised the event, confirmed that it had taken place but, when asked for further details, stated: “Sir Mark gave a talk, not a presentation, and did not want this [the contents] published.”

A source at BP, where Sir Mark has an office, confirmed: “He had the stroke at the beginning of July and he’s making really good progress.”

Sir Mark’s talk was billed as “his personal reflections on the current situation in the Middle East, the advent of the Arab Spring and considerations about its fallout”.

Coincidentally, BIEE’s president is Lord Howell – a former Foreign Office minister who, in that capacity, fielded questions regarding the rendition scandal and who is now William Hague’s personal adviser on energy and resource security. When The Independent on Sunday broke the news of Sir Mark’s BIEE talk to Scotland Yard last week, a spokesman noted the details but declined to comment.

British police launched an inquiry in January after documents discovered during the Libyan uprising suggested that Sir Mark had conspired in the rendition. The allegations were so serious that the police and Director of Public Prosecutions issued a statement saying: “It is in the public interest for them to be investigated now.”

In one of the documents, a letter sent to Gaddafi’s head of intelligence, Moussa Koussa, in March 2004, Sir Mark states that helping get Mr Belhadj to Libya “was the least we could do for you and for Libya to demonstrate the remarkable relationship we have built over recent years”. Sir Mark added: “I was grateful to you for helping the officer we sent out last week.”

Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director of Human Rights Watch, said: “A man with many secrets has a lot of favours he can call in. I hope he recovers soon enough to reveal some light on a very sordid page of British history. It is time to end the secrecy around Britain’s relationship with Gaddafi, and both the British and the Libyan public deserve some answers.”

Sir Mark is also facing a court battle as a result of a civil legal action that has been brought against him and the former foreign secretary Jack Straw, relating to the rendition and torture allegations. They are cited as key defendants in recently filed court documents that outline the abuse suffered by the two Libyan dissidents after they had been abducted and handed to Gaddafi’s regime with the help of British intelligence.

…

Jonathan Owen
Sunday, 21 October 2012

Find this story at 21 October 2012

© independent.co.uk

French secret services stopped tracking Toulouse gunman Mohamed Merah, despite evidence of his extensive links to jihadists, including in the UK, leaked documents suggest.

Le Monde newspaper says it has seen notes from the domestic intelligence agency DCRI describing his successful efforts to conceal his movements.

The judge investigating the case said he was perplexed by the DCRI decision.

Merah killed seven people in March before being shot dead by police.

The victims included three soldiers and four Jewish people.

The leaked papers suggest there was more than just suspicion on the part of the French intelligence services, says the BBC’s Christian Fraser in Paris.

Merah had been tracked by the security services since 2006.
Profile issue

The report prepared for the French government and leaked to Le Monde cites a DCRI officer raising concerns about the man in March 2011.

The officer said Merah rarely left his home and was paranoid and suspicious. He had no internet in his flat, did not appear to have a mobile phone and always used public telephone booths.

Another note, on 26 April 2011, reported that Merah was violent to women for having shown disrespect to a Muslim.

The note said he glorified the murder of “Western infidels” in songs he composed, and he was photographed with a knife and Koran. He travelled frequently to the Middle East.

He had a long list of contacts to Islamist movements in the UK, the same leaked document says.

According to Le Monde, Merah was last questioned in November 2011 and had great difficulty explaining a visit to Pakistan where he had been training with militants.

Abel Chennouf was one of Merah’s victims

Just a week later, the DCRI suddenly stopped monitoring him.

Judge Christophe Teissier said he was surprised by the move.

The judge said Merah’s profile was typical of a home-grown threat – he was independent, radicalised quickly, and did everything possible to conceal the support and training he was receiving.

In August, Le Monde said other documents it had seen showed Merah had made more than 1,800 calls to over 180 contacts in 20 different countries.

Merah was shot dead on 22 March after a huge manhunt culminated in a 32-hour stand-off with police at an apartment in Toulouse.

The Jewish victims included three children murdered at a school.

Merah’s rampage, from 11 to 19 March, terrorised the region.

19 October 2012 Last updated at 11:50 GMT

Find this story at 19 October 2012

BBC © 2012 The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read more.

The older sister of the Toulouse scooter killer, Mohamed Merah, had been under surveillance as a possible Islamist activist since 2008, it emerged yesterday. Souad Merah, 34, provided money, mobile phones and internet addresses to her brother in the months before his murderous attacks in the Toulouse area in March, the French radio station RTL reported.

Security files, made available to prosecutors last month, also reveal that Ms Merah had been under surveillance long before the killer was, RTL said. She was identified by French internal security services as a possible threat in 2008 – at the same time as another brother, Abdelkader, who has been in custody for six months.

Families of Merah’s seven victims called yesterday for Souad Merah to be arrested and questioned. Although she was briefly interviewed after the murders, the inquiry has concentrated on the possible role of Abdelkader, Merah’s older brother, in inspiring and assisting the killings.

Mohamed Merah, 23, died when police stormed his flat in Toulouse on 22 March after a 32-hour siege. In previous days, he had murdered three off-duty French paratroopers and three children and a teacher outside a Jewish school.

Merah, who filmed his murders, claimed to be working on behalf of al-Qa’ida. Security services believe he was a “lone wolf”, inspired by extremist Islamist teaching but acting independently or with the help of his brother. According to the files of the French internal security service, the DCRI, seen by RTL, his sister may have played, at the very least, a role in his conversion to radical Islam.

Souad Merah was under surveillance from 2008 as a follower of an extremist Salafist Islamic movement in Toulouse. She also visited Koranic schools in Cairo. She appears in French security service files in 2008 as a “follower of radical Islam” and in June 2011 she is listed as being “known for her links” to radical Salafists. In the months before the Toulouse killings, she provided Mohamed Merah with cash, mobile phones and the use of her internet address on several occasions, according to the files seen by RTL.

…

John Lichfield
Tuesday, 4 September 2012

Find This story at 4 September 2012

© independent.co.uk

Mohamed Merah n’avait pas de téléphone à son nom. Pour échapper aux surveillances de la police, l’auteur des tueries perpétrées les 11, 15 et 19 mars à Toulouse et à Montauban s’en était procuré un à celui de sa mère, Mme Aziri. La liste des appels fait partie des documents confidentiels de la Direction centrale du renseignement intérieur (DCRI) transmis le 3 août aux trois juges de Paris chargés d’instruire le dossier.

Ces notes permettent de se faire une idée des liens que le djihadiste de 24 ans avait tissés à travers le monde, et elles mettent à mal l’argument avancé par l’ex-patron de la DCRI, Bernard Squarcini, selon lequel Mohamed Merah se serait “radicalisé seul” et qu’il n’appartenait “à aucun réseau” (Le Monde du 24 mars). Il semble que la police française n’ignorait quasiment rien du parcours du jeune djihadiste toulousain.

DES CORRESPONDANTS AU KENYA, EN CROATIE, EN BOLIVIE, AU BHOUTAN

Ainsi, l’une des 23 notes partiellement déclassifiées et dont Le Monde a eu connaissance, datée du 26 avril 2011, fait état de “1 863 communications relevées entre le 1er septembre 2010 et le 20 février 2011”. Durant cette période, celui qui n’est encore qu’un apprenti terroriste effectue un voyage dans plusieurs pays du Moyen-Orient et en Afghanistan. Il passe notamment 186 appels à des correspondants installés hors de France, dans 20 pays différents.

Le détail montre que Mohamed Merah a joint vocalement ou par SMS 94 numéros de téléphones localisés en Egypte, où se trouvait son frère Abdelkader, en Algérie, où demeurent son père et une partie de sa famille, mais aussi au Maroc, en Grande-Bretagne, en Espagne, en Côte d’Ivoire, au Kenya, en Croatie, en Roumanie, en Bolivie, en Thaïlande, en Russie, au Kazhastan, au Laos, à Taïwan, en Turquie, en Arabie saoudite, aux Emirats arabes unis, en Israël, et pour finir au Bhoutan, minuscule royaume enclavé en plein cœur du massif himalayen, où Mohamed Merah appelle neuf numéros.

Avec qui le petit voyou de la cité des Izards de Toulouse correspond-il à travers ces nombreux appels dans ces multiples pays ? Les enquêteurs de la DCRI ont sûrement identifié quelques-uns de ces interlocuteurs, mais les pièces transmises aux magistrats instructeurs, qui n’ont été que très partiellement déclassifiées par le ministre de l’intérieur, Manuel Valls, n’en disent rien.

UN “COMPORTEMENT INQUIÉTANT”

Ces notes attestent également que le renseignement intérieur connaissait Mohamed Merah au moins depuis 2009, après s’être intéressé à son frère Abdelkader dès 2008. Abdelkader, 29 ans, mis en examen pour “complicité” et en détention provisoire à Fresnes depuis le 25 mars, mais aussi sa sœur Souad, 34 ans, étaient surveillés par les services. Les déplacements du premier en Egypte, où il suit des cours dans les écoles coraniques d’obédience salafistes, sont suivis à la trace. Ainsi, le 23 février 2011, les services allemands alertent leurs collègues français de son passage à l’aéroport de Francfort, en provenance du Caire et à destination de Toulouse. Même chose pour Souad, dont le départ pour Le Caire prévu le 30 novembre 2010 de l’aéroport Charles-de-Gaulle à Roissy est signalé à la DCRI.

Et, à cette occasion, Mohamed apparaît aussi sur les radars du renseignement intérieur. Mais ce n’est qu’en mars 2011, après son long voyage jusqu’en Afghanistan, qu’un dispositif plus serré est mis en place autour du jeune homme. Un fonctionnaire fait état d’une “surveillance au domicile de Mohamed Merah, 17, rue du Sergent-Vigné, appartement numéro 2, volets toujours fermés”. Dans son compte rendu, le policier souligne que la mission a réussi : “Il a été possible d’identifier formellement la présence de l’objectif.”

Durant cette période, les policiers ne lâchent pas leur “objectif”. Ils le prennent en filature et prêtent une attention soutenue à sa téléphonie. Mohamed Merah a un “comportement inquiétant”, estime l’un d’eux. “Le changement fréquent de boîtiers et de cartes SIM attribués à Mme Aziri (…) laisse supposer que la famille Merah souhaite brouiller les pistes”, suggère un autre.

Visiblement, les fonctionnaires de police qui se sont collés aux basques de Mohamed Merah pendant plusieurs semaines ne doutent guère des orientations de leur client. “Le comportement prudent et suspicieux de Mohamed Merah influe sur sa famille”, écrivent-ils, avant de préciser : “Le dispositif de surveillance dynamique engagé sur Mohamed Merah démontre qu’après une période de latence et d’observation, l’objectif amorce un rapprochement avec la mouvance salafiste toulousaine, en particulier avec [ici le nom est noirci pour préserver sa confidentialité] mais également et plus intéressant encore avec [là, deux noms sont noircis pour les mêmes raisons] tous deux partis récemment en Mauritanie.” Cet extrait d’une note d’avril 2011 nuance la thèse défendue par la DCRI et son ex-directeur Bernard Squarcini au lendemain de l’assaut contre le terroriste, selon laquelle Mohamed Merah se serait “autoradicalisé en prison [en 2009], tout seul, en lisant le Coran” (Le Monde du 24 mars).

…

LE MONDE | 23.08.2012 à 10h55 • Mis à jour le 23.08.2012 à 16h57

Par Yves Bordenave

Find this story at 23 August 2012

© Le Monde.fr

France’s Le Monde newspaper says it has seen confidential documents of the police investigation into Toulouse gunman Mohamed Merah that suggest he was not working alone.

The papers showed he had made more than 1,800 calls to over 180 contacts in 20 different countries, Le Monde said.

Merah had also made several trips to the Middle East and Afghanistan.

Merah, 24, killed three soldiers and four Jewish people in March before being shot dead by police.
SIM cards

Le Monde’s article cites confidential papers from the DCRI intelligence agency.

The BBC’s Christian Fraser in Paris says the papers obtained by Le Monde cast light on a young man who was much more than an angry petty criminal that had “radicalised himself” – as suggested by the DCRI earlier in the investigation.

Between September 2010 and February 2011 the former garage mechanic made hundreds of calls to countries including Egypt, Morocco, Kenya, Kazhakstan, Saudi Arabia, Bhutan and the UK.

Merah had become known to the intelligence services as early as 2009, after they had been following his sister, Souad, and his brother, Abdelkhadar, who are now both in police custody.

The papers show that intelligence services recorded a trip to a Salafist, or ultraconservative Sunni Islamist, school of obedience in Egypt.

In February 2011, German officials alerted French colleagues that Merah had travelled from Cairo, via Frankfurt, to Toulouse.

It was only in March 2011, after a long trip to Afghanistan, that Merah was placed under tighter surveillance.

One official quoted in the papers said Merah changed SIM cards, registered under his mother’s name, frequently, and suggested the family was trying to protect him.

Merah, who himself claimed to have al-Qaeda affiliation, was also reported to have contacted one known Salafist in Toulouse and two others who recently left for Mauritania.

Merah was shot dead on 22 March after a huge manhunt culminated in a 32-hour stand-off with police at an apartment in Toulouse.

The Jewish victims included three children murdered at a school.

23 August 2012 Last updated at 16:12 GMT

Find this story at 23 August 2012

BBC © 2012 The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read more.

“Everything that we could have missed, we missed”. A former French intelligence agent admits they should have caught Mohamed Merah before his Toulouse shooting spree which left seven people dead, including three children. Merah was killed after a bloody stand-off with police. His older brother Abdelkader is in custody facing charges of complicity to murder. But two months on and with no official documentation from authorities, many questions remain unanswered.

Latest update: 08/06/2012
Find this story at 08 June 2012

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