Reprieve delivers justice and saves lives, from death row to Guantánamo Bay.
Reprieve delivers justice and saves lives, from death row to Guantánamo Bay.
Reprieve announced yesterday that we would not be taking part in the government's inquiry into collusion in torture and rendition by British security services.
Along with a coalition of 10 leading human rights organisations, including Amnesty, Liberty and Human Rights Watch, we've decided that the way the detainee inquiry is set up means that it will simply not be able to get to the bottom of the allegations that our country has been involved in some of the horrific abuses that have been taking place in the name of the "war on terror".
Given the near total lack ...
There can be few worse imagined places in the world than that of African Death Row.
In a continent that is plagued by insurmountable suffering through the lack for the most basic and necessary needs for survival, food and water, one can scarcely attempt to visualise what an African prison must be like, let alone Death Row.
Institutional violence, rape and starvation are the primary realities in practically every part of African prison life. If you tried to conduct a league table for the country with the worst prisons you wouldn’t get anywhere. Angola, Libya or maybe South Africa ...
Just sitting here at 3am about to leave for the airport thinking about the last few weeks here in Texas.
The Reprieve house is all packed up, Sophie and Annie have left for opposite corners of the United States and I will fly off in a couple of hours.
The work we did here did not save Mark Stroman's life and that is sad and upsetting and makes me angry. Mark was failed by the system, as was his victim, the ever amazing Rais Bhuiyan. Not one judge stood up for Rais' civil rights and not one judge stood ...
What makes someone a hero? Judging by the heroes in our popular culture, such as Rambo, General Schwarzkopf or even Superman, the answer would seem to be that a hero is someone who is stronger than everyone else, who obliterates all of his enemies through violence, and who would never just take an insult, or injury to a loved one, without exacting revenge.
This is no doubt the kind of hero Mark Ströman tried to be when he took to the convenience stores in his area to kill Arabs in retaliation for 9/11 (although I should add that ...
I have now been with Reprieve for well over a year. In that time, the death penalty team, which I have the privilege to work with, has assisted nearly 100 prisoners facing execution around the world – our current caseload is nearly 80.
It may therefore come as a surprise to you that, until last night, when Mark Ströman was executed in Texas at around 3am UK time, I managed to avoid ever having to deal with one of the prisoners we assist actually being executed. (Our last execution before last night’s was that of Akmal Shaikh in China ...
The victim of a post-9/11 ‘hate crime’ will today ask a federal court to order the Governor of Texas to comply with the much-lauded Texas Victims’ Bill of Rights, hours before his attacker is due to die.
Shooting survivor Rais Bhuiyan is today suing Governor Rick Perry for multiple violations of his rights during the 2002 trial of his attacker Mark Stroman. The ground-breaking lawsuit will be heard by a federal court in Austin at 10am local time, with Stroman's execution scheduled to take place across the state in Huntsville later this evening.
Among other claims, Mr. Bhuiyan ...
Last week saw one of those little-noticed coincidences in British politics: as one inquiry into a very public scandal came struggling into the world, the slow death of another began.
The chances are you'll have heard about David Cameron's announcement of an inquiry into phone hacking at the News of the World. But amid the fury around the paper's unbelievable callousness, the first stages in the quiet burial of the Gibson Inquiry - concerned with the role of our country's security services in the torture, rendition and illegal imprisonment of those swept up by the 'War on ...
The top news in the last couple of weeks has been that Lundbeck, the manufacturer of Nembutal (the drug which many states in the US now use for executions), has introduced strict controls to prevent unauthorised sales of the drug for use in executions. Reprieve had been pressuring the company to make such a move, which sends a message that European companies will not tolerate use of their products to kill prisoners.
Texas once again showed its disregard for the US’s international obligations by executing Humberto Leal, over the protests of the Obama administration and international community. Leal had ...
A man who survived being shot in the face in 2001 is to sue Texas Governor Rick Perry and other officials is today demanding respect for his rights as a victim of violent crime. Rais Bhuiyan is expected to file the suit at Travis County Courthouse, Austin, TX, at 10 a.m. local time.
Mr Bhuiyan was shot by Mark Stroman in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Fuelled by his addiction to methamphetamine, which he used to medicate his post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), Mr Stroman was close to the edge when he caught his girlfriend having an affair. Then ...
The Guardian reports today on a Supreme Court judgement which has gone against MI5's attempts to cover up evidence that Guantánamo detainees had been tortured.
MI5's lawyers had been attempting to overturn an earlier ruling, which had prevented them from suppressing claims of abuse at Guantánamo and other overseas prisons used in the 'War on Terror'.
Reprieve's Director, Clive Stafford Smith described this legal fight-back as 'wonderful', and expressed hope that the UK's governing parties stick to the principles which they voiced in opposition:
“The first casualty in the 'War on Terror' certainly was ...
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