Protesters demonstrate outside 'Guantanamo UK' jail in Londo

Link : http://uk.news.yahoo.com/041003/323/f3td9.html


Muslims pray outside the magistrates court beside the Belmarsh Prison in London


LONDON (AFP) - Human rights activists protested outside a top-security jail in London where some foreign nationals have been detained without trial for almost three years under controversial anti-terrorism laws.

Dubbing Belmarsh Prison in the southeast of the capital "Guantanamo UK", after the US detention centre for Al-Qaeda and Taliban suspects in Cuba, the several hundred demonstrators demanded the government either charge the suspects or free them.

According to rights groups, a total of 14 foreign nationals are being held in British jails or secure hospitals under the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act, passed soon after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.

It allows foreigners to be jailed indefinitely without charge or trial if the home secretary rules they are suspected of involvement in international terrorism, and they opt not to leave the country.

"The use of detention without trial damages the legal system, damages the fight against terrorism and damages Britain's reputation internationally," said Shami Chakrabarti, director of civil liberties group Liberty.

"We need an alternative now that ends this injustice."

The 2001 law, which saw the first arrests soon after it was passed, has been defended by Home Secretary David Blunkett as a necessary measure in the battle against terrorism.

However in August, an influential committee of British parliamentarians said it should be scrapped "as a matter of urgency", while Blunkett has also suffered legal reverses over individual detainees.

In April, the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC), a tribunal which decides the status of foreign nationals facing detention or deportation on the grounds of national security, ordered that a suspected Algerian terrorist should be released into house arrest due to mental illness.

A month before that, a Libyan national suspected of links to the Al-Qaeda network walked free after SIAC decided he was being detained on the basis of "wholly unreliable evidence".

However in August, Blunkett successfully defeated a court appeal by 10 detainees whose lawyers argued it was wrong to hold them under evidence which might have been gathered using torture or ill-treatment at Guantanamo Bay or the US Bagram airbase in Afghanistan