SubscribeI’ve little doubt that it’s right that the law treat foreigners in the UK or under effective UK rule as they would a citizen. Anything that undermines a right’s universality reduces the quality of our democracy for all.
Those that would claim certain rights for themselves while denying them to others, tend to base their views on naïve prejudice. Without irony, the Daily Mail invokes Auschwitz to erroneously ask, ‘They [the law lords] claimed it unfair that these men weren’t treated in the same way as British citizens (though why should they be, when the danger to this country comes largely from foreign nationals?)’. Erroneous because British citizens have carried out suicide bombings and there’s long been evidence al-Qaeda’s recruiting in the UK. So while it’s true that most terrorists aren’t British, letting British terrorists off blows a huge hole in our anti-terror defences.
But now we’re to be equal in the eyes of a police state, where a politician decides who’s to be placed under house arrest, without the accused seeing the evidence. Like ASI says, ‘scary’. Scary without saying anything against the present incumbent: tomorrow’s Home Secretary could be someone who sees the war on terror as a war on Islam, say, and so locks up all the Muslims.
Anyway. The bogus justifications are that some evidence can’t be produced in court because it might tell the terrorist who grassed and that wire taps are inadmissible in court. The first is bogus because placing the terrorist under house arrest (or taking any other action of which they’re aware), will just as easily tell them somebody’s grassed and making wire taps admissible is an easier route than this. I suspect the real issue is that evidence upon which the government feels it must act has been supplied by the CIA, and other foreign intelligence services, on condition it remain secret and that this is the factor driving the police state forward.
Exporting freedom in the face of hysteria ……Exporting human rights to Iraq… even in war
