Reprieve uses the law to enforce the human rights of prisoners, from death row to Guantánamo Bay.
Reprieve uses the law to enforce the human rights of prisoners, from death row to Guantánamo Bay.
Instead of threatening a new system of secret courts, the British government must respond to the unprecedented wrongdoing of the 'War on Terror' years by keeping the legal system open and transparent.
Just a few weeks into 2012, we have already been presented with a series of stark reminders of just how far the British government is from its stated aim of "get[ting] to the bottom" of UK complicity in the torture and rendition of detainees during the War on Terror.
January has so far seen the opening of two new police investigations into UK involvement in the rendition ...
It’s ten years since the first detainees arrived at Guantánamo Bay. To give some sort of perspective, that’s almost as long as the ipod and the Euro have been around. In the same way, it’s become hard to imagine a world without Guantánamo, to the extent that it has entered our language as a by-word for unending imprisonment beyond the rule of law – the 21st century synonym for ‘gulag’.
Yet, almost paradoxically, the camp’s notoriety has not been matched by either the political will or the public pressure needed to close it. President Obama ...
After finally being moved to Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo, following out-of-control riots in Kisangani, Joshua French and his friend, Tjostolv ‘Mike’ Moland, have written a report to share and highlight the horrors of their first weeks in the new location.
As I read through the report, the picture Joshua paints becomes more and more vivid. So many things he says demonstrates the flaws in the DRC’s justice system, from rough and humiliating physical treatment by the guards to constant loud noise, preventing even a couple of hours sleep. However, a few sentences and stories stand out ...
The Chinese government never wanted anyone to know about Akmal Shaikh. They wanted him to remain one of the nameless thousands executed each year for crimes ranging from corruption to destroying cultural artefacts.
Instead his execution on 29 December, 2009 was covered by almost every newspaper between London and Beijing. Instead the world's attention turned to one of China's most abhorrent and hidden human rights abuses.
Akmal, a British citizen, was arrested in September 2007 at Urumqi Airport in China. He was convicted of drug smuggling under article 347 of China's Criminal Code. His trial took place ...
Last month a Superior Court judge ruled California’s revised lethal injection protocol to be invalid on the grounds that the state failed to adequately consider switching to use of a single drug.
Instead it has opted to retain its triple-drug cocktail that in 2006 was declared unconstitutional in light of evidence that executions inflict excessive pain on the condemned.
California stands at a crossroads: it can appeal the ruling and ignore the growing catalogue of botched executions as well as expert medical testimony that sodium thiopental frequently fails to induce unconsciousness, thereby inflicting the horror of slow suffocation. Or ...
Over the past few days I have spent a lot of time waiting to go to hearings in district courts in Indonesia, where death sentences are still regularly handed out. Outside the cell where the prisoners were waiting for their hearings, tiny little children and their mothers wait patiently in the heat, eyeing the bars anxiously. Their vigil reminded me of the mothers, fathers, families and friends we met in Reprieve’s work and in particular, of Kari Hilde, Joshua French’s mother.
In 2010 Joshua French and his friend, Tjostolv ‘Mike’ Moland were sentenced to death for the third ...
What is your most terrible nightmare? Is it worse than being trapped in a distant black hole, in an unknown country, unable to contact your family?
Is it more terrifying than torture, by day and by night, when your family does not even know whether you are dead or alive? Is your greatest fear, then, worse than Yunus Rahmatullah's reality?
The law does not concern itself with trifles, and if you ever find yourself held beyond the reach of basic decency, you will be glad that the arm of the law is long. On Wednesday the rule of law ...
Almost eight years ago, the British detained two men in Iraq. They were Yunus Rahmatullah and Amanatullah Ali, although their names would remain secret for a long time.
They were turned over to the Americans and, with full British knowledge, rendered to Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan. In transit and upon arrival, they were badly mistreated. They have remained there ever since.
Nothing came to light for several years as they languished in the Bagram black hole, sometimes described as Guantánamo's evil twin. Eventually on February 26th, 2009, John Hutton, then the Minister of Defence, was forced ...
Last Friday, lawyers representing the victims of CIA drone attacks wrote to the US Ambassador to Pakistan, Cameron Munter, to inform him that we were going to bring him to justice for his complicity in the illegal killing of Pakistan citizens.
We gave him a few days to consider his position before we went public because, as well as being a clear breach of international law, the new protocol announced for the US drone campaign has effectively painted a target on poor Mr Munter, and invited angry Pakistanis to shoot at him. My own purpose in seeking justice is, not ...
On Thursday, after countless official denials, the location of the CIA's secret prison in Romania was revealed. According to the Associated Press and SDZ, Khaled Sheikh Mohammed and other al Qaeda suspects were held in a concealed basement beneath Bucharest's National Registry Office for Classified Information in 2003 and 2004.
The Romanian government have always dismissed allegations of a secret prison on their soil, and they still do; a senior official has said that the existence of the prison was "impossible". "We have no knowledge of this subject," AP quoted President Traian Basescu as saying.
The evidence tells ...
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