Legal advice on Iraq War flawed: No shit Sherlock

For some reason –probably all the hoohah over John Sargent– I missed the news last Monday that Lord Bingham, onetime senior law lord of the UK, criticised the War on Iraq as “a serious violation of international law and of the rule of law”:

Summarising Lord Goldsmith’s reasoning, Lord Bingham said: “A reasonable case could be made that resolution 1441 was capable in principle of reviving the authorisation in resolution 678, but the argument could only be sustainable if there were ‘strong factual grounds’ for concluding that Iraq had failed to take the final opportunity. There would need to be ‘hard evidence’.”

Ten days later, in a Parliamentary written answer issued on March 17, 2003, Lord Goldsmith said it was “plain” that Iraq had failed to comply with its disarmament obligations and was therefore in material breach of resolution 687. Accordingly, the authority to use force under resolution 678 had revived.

The former judge then quoted the conclusion to Lord Goldsmith’s Parliamentary statement: “Resolution 1441 would, in terms, have provided that a further decision of the Security Council to sanction force was required if that had been intended. Thus, all that resolution 1441 requires is reporting to and discussion by the Security Council of Iraq’s failures, but not an express further decision to authorise force.”

Lord Bingham was not impressed. “This statement was, I think flawed in two fundamental respects,” he said.

“First, it was not plain that Iraq had failed to comply in a manner justifying resort to force and there were no strong factual grounds or hard evidence to show that it had: Hans Blix and his team of weapons inspectors had found no weapons of mass destruction, were making progress and expected to complete their task in a matter of months.

“Secondly, it passes belief that a determination whether Iraq had failed to avail itself of its final opportunity was intended to be taken otherwise than collectively by the Security Council.”

Which is more or less what every anti-war activist already knew anyway. Like the dirty dossiers and the claims about Iraq being thirty minutes away from attacking Britain, Goldsmith’s legal advice was always meant as a figleaf for a decision already taken. There was never the intent on the part of Blair to really test the legality of an invasion; his former roomie knew what he wanted and so he delivered it. Had Goldsmith’s argument been made in a court of law it wouldn’t have passed the laugh test. As long as it was good enough to convince the doubters in parliament and the press it was good enough.

The runup to the War on Iraq made hollow phrases of democracy and rule of law, as the first was ignored while the second was perverted to make possible this war. It made clear what the population’s role was: to shut up, vote every few years without expecting anything important to change and to let the important decisions be made by our betters. And then Hazel “bloody” Blears has the gall to lecture us about about political disengagment and the negativity of bloggers?

No justice for Jean (did you expect anything else?)

Oh look, it’s another pointless inquest to establish what we already know, that Jean Charles de Menezes was murdered, that his killers got away with it and of course, that this inquest is “not a forum to determine
culpability or compensation, still less to dispense punishment”. It’s not as if anybody important was killed and we can’t have the police be afraid to murder innocent people if they really really believe they’re terrorists…

The inquest will hear from 75 witnesses, including 48 serving police officers who have been granted anonymity, and Tube passengers.

The first police officer will appear later in the week.

Among those who will be speaking for the first time will be policemen codenamed C2 and C12, the two specialist firearms officers who shot Mr de Menezes dead.

Far be it for me to say that this is the perfect opportunity for some spontaneous vigilante justice, but what the hey.

Official: writing poetry isn’t terrorism

I blogged about the socalled “lyrical terrorist”last year, who was arrested an prosecuted for writing bad jihadi poetry as well as having some dodgy books on her bookshelves. Eventually she was convicted under the 2000 terrorism act, but appealed and now she has had her conviction quashed:

Samina Malik, 24, was given a nine-month suspended jail sentence at the Old Bailey last December after she became the first woman to be found guilty of storing material likely to be of use for terrorism.

Malik, of Southall, west London, adopted her nickname because of extremist lyrics she wrote on till receipts, but was never prosecuted over her poetry.

The lord chief justice, Lord Phillips, sitting in the court of appeal with Mr Justice Goldring and Mr Justice Plender, quashed the conviction after the Crown conceded that it was unsafe. In his judgment, Lord Phillips said the court decided that an offence would only be committed if the material concerned was likely to have provided practical assistance to a person either committing or preparing for terrorism. Propagandist or theological material did not fall within the legislation, he said.

“We consider that there is a very real danger that the jury became confused and that the prosecution have rightly conceded that this conviction is unsafe.”

In other words, once again it’s the judges that have to clean up the mess New Labour made passing badly drafted laws.

Books are terrorist material now?

It seems like, judging from the press reports on the conviction of the socalled “lyrical terrorist, in real life a not too bright 23 year old woman working in a WH Smiths at Heathrow:

In a box file in the family lounge was a printed version of the “declaration of war” by Osama bin Laden.

One of Malik’s poems, entitled The Living Martyrs, said: “Let us make Jihad/ Move to the front line/
To chop chop head of kuffar swine”.

A second poem was called How to Behead. “It’s not as messy or as hard as some may think/ It’s all about the flow of the wrist,” it read.

The Mujaheddin Poisoner’s Handbook, Encyclopaedia Jihad, How To Win In Hand To Hand Combat, and How To Make Bombs and Sniper Manual were found on her computer.

The court heard Malik joined an extremist organisation called Jihad Way, set up explicitly to disseminate terrorist propaganda and support for al Qaida.

Jonathan Sharp, prosecuting, said she was an “unlikely” but “committed” Islamic extremist: “She had a library of material that she had collected for terrorist purposes. That collection would be extremely useful for someone planning terrorist activity.”

Do something for me, willya? Just put these titles mentioned above in Google and see what comes up? Take “How To Make Bombs” for example: quite a few hits there. That’s because this whole conviction is utter bollocks, in which this confused young woman who gets just a bit too involved in playing muhajedin is just
railroaded as an example of how tough British justice is on terrorism. This doesn’t make the country any safer.

The heart of the matter

In an excellent article by Henry Porter on the Guardian’s Comment is Free blog about Gordon Brown’s generous offer to give the British a bill of rights, the following paragraph succintly explains where a large part of New Labour’s authoritarianism is coming from:

In a new paper, Roger Smith, the director of Justice, puts his finger on an important part of the government’s culture. ‘A single thread links together matters as apparently diverse as the Iraq war, Asbos and the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill. That thread is an impatience by ministers with due process, either in the legislative process of policy or its execution.’

Which is odd, since so many of New Labour’s top bods are supposed to be lawyers, so they should be familiar with the concept of due process and its importance.