A man has been imprisoned for more than six
years without being charged with any crime. His name is Talha Ahsan. He suffers
from Asperger syndrome. Despite that he has become something of a celebrity as
a recognised poet. The significance of this will soon be apparent. His
imprisonment is all due to Tony Blair having removed a piece of English law
that has formed one of the mainstays of our legal system for more than 300 years: habeas corpus. My layman's understanding of what habeas corpus means is that a person imprisoned should be brought
before the court within a short or reasonable period of time after his, or her, arrest
and charged with a crime, or released. It is protection against perpetual imprisonment. The last time habeas corpus was suspended was in the late eighteenth century, partly
out of fear of the French Revolution spreading to England and partly in
response to social unrest at home. The intellectual corresponding societies
were targeted and, like today, many spies and agents
provocateurs were deployed to try and trap people into saying or doing
something for which they might be taken into custody. This included the
interception of mail. The suspension of habeas corpus came on 7 May 1794.
Interestingly, like Talha Ahsan, many of
the people targeted in what became known as the Treason Trials were poets and
writers who belonged to corresponding societies, and as the name suggests, wrote
to one another on radical issues of the day. However this was interpreted by
the attorney general, Sir John Scott, as being seditious libel and treason,
crimes which carried a rather horrific death penalty. Thomas Holcroft, one
who was arrested and imprisoned, was well-known for his then popular plays and novels. Another
was the poet and political writer, John Thelwall, and even the novelist William
Godwin, father of Mary Shelley, was fortunate not to have been imprisoned under
the suspension of this legal protection. Over thirty men were arrested and imprisoned and could have
been held until February 1795 without being charged or brought before a court. As
it happened all the cases were dropped before that time due to the defence of
Thomas Erskine who argued that it was not a violent revolution these intellectuals sought but
a revolution of ideas. Erskine was a powerful orator and had previously
defended Thomas Paine over his Rights of
Man publication in 1792. On that occasion the defence was unsuccessful, leading Paine to seek refuge abroad.
Reading the above it will be noticed that although
habeas corpus had been suspended in
1794 these thirty men were not in prison for even a year, though they were still
in prison for longer than they should have been. Today, in this enlightened
age, the poet Talha Ahsan has been imprisoned for more than six years. Another
person arrested under war-crime terrorist Tony Blair’s so-called anti-terrorism laws is
Babar Ahmad whose case I blogged about earlier this year. Babar Ahmad has been
in prison for more than eight years. This is disgusting. Even a High Court judge has said so.
Arguing the case of these neglected men,
like Thomas Erskine, is a very talented defence lawyer, Gareth Peirce, a
descendent of the Fabians, Beatrice and Sydney Webb. She puts a very strong
case against the USA and in favour of those imprisoned without charge, and
includes in her arguments the lack of balance in US and UK extradition laws. I
quote from her extremely well-argued article for the London Review of Books entitled
America’s Non-Compliance published two years ago, in which she asks two very
pertinent questions about the country to which Theresa May wants to extradite
UK citizens.
“We read, year after year, obscene details of executions
in the US: most are successful, but there are also descriptions of frustrated
attempts, hour after hour, to find a vein to inject. For a long time, the UK
had no cause for complacency. Capital punishment was abolished here in 1965,
but Britain continued to extradite to countries that retained the death
penalty, and would have continued to do so had not the European Court
determined in 1989 in the case of Soering v. UK that the ‘death row’ phenomenon, in
which a person might spend years awaiting execution while the legal process was
exhausted, constituted inhuman and degrading treatment according to Article 3
of the Convention. Since then no European state has been permitted to extradite
in the absence of an assurance that conviction would not bring the death
penalty.
But
what of extradition to a future of total isolation? Can we comfortably, and
within the law, contemplate sending men to that fate? . .”
Following the attempt to extradite Julian Assange to Sweden on trumped up charges, from a Supreme Court decision presided over by another High Court judge on the point of retirement, my concern is that the legal system in this country has simply become an extension of central government which is in hock to big business party donors. I have therefore set up a Facebook group for poets, writers and artists to oppose extradition for UK citizens. Please show your support.
