Reprieve delivers justice and saves lives, from death row to Guantánamo Bay.
Reprieve delivers justice and saves lives, from death row to Guantánamo Bay.
At long last, two High Court judges have told the Government what any sane person already knew.
Issuing yet another judgment in Binyam Mohamed’s case, the judges said that no rational person can argue that evidence of torture qualifies as intelligence.
“It cannot be suggested,” the judges wrote, “that information as to how officials of the US Government admitted treating [Binyam] during his interrogation is information that can in any democratic society governed by the rule of law be characterised as ‘secret’ or as ‘intelligence’.”
No indeed. The material at stake relates to Binyam’s “allegation that he had ...
Extra--David Miliband is not happy over today's loss in the Binyam Mohamed case. He's just vowed a brave battle all the way up to the ramparts of the High Court to save the "inviolable principle" of opacity in intelligence sharing.
For those tuning in, this fuss is over all of seven paragraphs. I haven't read them, but the British Court has been absolutely clear what the paragraphs contain. They do not out an agent; they do not crack a code. What they do, apparently, is recite some of the abuse meted out on poor Binyam by US ...
I find it hard to understand the logic of Dalia Grybauskaitė, Lithuania’s President and it is not just because I don’t speak Lithuanian. On Tuesday Grybauskaitė wrote to President Obama congratulating him on winning the Nobel Peace Prize, saying in her letter to him, “Your call for the new beginning where America leads, but also works together with each and everybody to achieve what is a common goal has been answered.”
But when it comes to closing Guantánamo Bay, Grybauskaitė appears to be letting the beleaguered President’s calls for help reverberate through the Lithuanian forests with no ...
Torturing people doesn't keep us safe. MI5 should stop making policy by anecdote and condemn those who abuse prisoners
Jonathan Evans, the head of MI5, told an audience at Bristol University yesterday that we have to consort with people who torture, and that we can do so while keeping our own hands pristine clean.
Evans stressed that MI5 is "an accountable public organisation." Since it is generally neither accountable nor public, his speech should be seen as a welcome foray into the public arena. Reading the full text of his speech, most was entirely unobjectionable. But it is sad ...
Someone diagnosed with bipolar disorder (formerly known as manic depression) may swing from moods of deep depression to periods of overactive, excited behaviour known as mania. Between these severe highs and lows can be stable times.
Stephen Fry talks about his own experiences with bipolar disorder: having discovered how serious an illness it is, he decided to speak out about it and find out more. In a documentary that can be watched here, he investigates bi-polar disorder and meets with the singer Robbie Williams and the actress Carrie Fischer who have suffered from those disorders too.
In its most severe ...
Akmal Shaikh is facing imminent execution in China for carrying drugs; Reprieve believes he suffers from bipolar disorder, and was likely delusional at the time of the offence. We are trying to illustrate the debilitating effect of bipolar disorder for the Chinese authorities.
Please share with us your own experience, whether personal or otherwise. To kick off, here is the story offered by myself, Clive Stafford Smith.
CLIVE STAFFORD SMITH, Director, Reprieve:
My dad suffered from bipolar disorder from the early Sixties until his death in 2008. It cannot detract from my love for him, but it was certainly confusing ...
"You know, I just don't see how he's going to do it. Is he planning to put two-hundred-odd men on a plane January 21st and ship them to God knows where?"
That was Adel al Gazzar at our last meeting at Guantánamo. The sentiment he voiced echoes through the halls of the prison these days. There is a heavy hush of two hundred men just...waiting. Tallying the days since a promise was made. Counting their freed fellows on two hands. It doesn't take long to count to 19.
Adel's a savvy guy, and could easily ...
Last week, she came to London to share her experience and thoughts about the death penalty. A board member of Murder Victims' Families for Reconciliation, Cathy talks about her spiritual journey as well as her thoughts about the judicial process in the US and the death penalty: an enlightening testimony which deeply affected all of us.
In her own words:
"What the death penalty does -- and we (the murder victims' families) are so clear about this, I am -- is it creates more victims".
October 10th was the world day against the death penalty. The focus this year was on abolishing the death penalty for juveniles (aged 14 to 18). The World Coalition Against the Death Penalty was also celebrating the 20th birthday of the International Convention on the Rights of the Child.
The use of the death penalty for crimes committed by people younger than 18 is prohibited under international human rights law. Protecting children implies protecting them from any act which could damage their basic rights.
With the adoption by the UN of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in ...
It is rather easy, looking back, to identify the beliefs that our ancestors clung to with a fervent faith.
No doubt, 400 years ago, those who burned witches at the stake thought they were righting evil in society.
Four centuries on, the history books are not kind to them. We know the "witches" were innocent, since no coven of witches actually existed. We now recognise that any trial that sent its victim to the stake was derived from a "witch hunt" that served no possible penal purpose.
It is more difficult, perhaps, to identify our modern "flat earth" beliefs - those ...
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