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<font size=3><br>
</font><h1><b>Revealed: flawed intelligence exposes the scandal of
Belmarsh detainees<br><br>
<br><br>
</b></h1><h3><b>By Robert Verkaik, Legal Affairs
Correspondent</b></h3><font size=3><a href="http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/legal/story.jsp?story=598178" eudora="autourl">http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/legal/story.jsp?story=598178<br><br>
</a></font><h4><b>06 January 2005</b></h4><font size=3>The case against
the foreign terror suspects imprisoned in Britain without trial for three
years is partly founded on flawed and inaccurate intelligence, court
papers seen by <i>The Independent</i> reveal.<br><br>
Alarming weaknesses in the secret services' evidence cast serious doubt
on the Home Secretary's justification for detaining 12 men held under
emergency legislation rushed through Parliament in the aftermath of 11
September.<br><br>
Last month a historic judgment in the House of Lords triggered a
constitutional crisis when the judges ruled that the men's detention was
in breach of human rights law.<br><br>
The documents reveal:<br><br>
* A security service assessment was embarrassingly withdrawn after it
emerged that the purpose behind a visit to Dorset by a group of Muslim
men had not been to elect a terrorist leader but to get away from their
wives for the weekend.<br><br>
* Confirmation that the Government is using evidence of association with
the Guantanamo detainee Moazzam Begg to hold at least two of the foreign
terror suspects under its emergency powers.<br><br>
* False allegations made against one of the Algerian detainees in
relation to his association with Mr Begg arose from an MI5 surveillance
operation of Mr Begg's Islamic bookshop in Birmingham in 2000. MI5
wrongly claimed that weapons had been found there.<br><br>
* The Home Secretary has been forced to concede that some of the funds
raised by the detainee Abu Rideh for alleged terrorist activity were sent
to orphanages in Afghanistan run by a Canadian priest.<br><br>
* Testimony against two of the detainees came from an affidavit sworn by
a man who was offered a lenient sentence in return for
evidence.<br><br>
* Newspaper reports, including ones in <i>The Guardian</i> and <i>La
Stampa</i>, were used by the Home Secretary to support allegations of
terrorism against at least two of the detainees.<br><br>
* Two of the detainees were awarded compensation for false arrest shortly
before they were detained under the anti-terrorist emergency
powers.<br><br>
* MI5 reports, as part of the evidence against the detainees, describe
the men as being "excessively security conscious" when
travelling to and from London shopping centres.<br><br>
* The detention certificate of F, one of the Algerian detainees, was
revoked after it emerged he should have been deported to France rather
than imprisoned without trial.<br><br>
* One of the detainee's children has been taken into care.<br><br>
While the papers, released in the run-up to the implementation of the
Freedom of Information Act and now available on the Special Immigration
Appeal [SIAC] website, only give details of the "open" evidence
against the detainees, the inaccuracy of some of these assertions raises
questions about the reliability of the secret evidence that the detainees
have never been allowed to see.<br><br>
It also supports conclusions reached by the SIAC judges in granting the
release of a Libyan suspect last year when they warned that many
assertions had not been supported by a fair analysis of the
facts.<br><br>
They said then: "Some [of the assertions] are clearly misleading
when the source documents are looked at and some can only be justified if
the worst possible view is taken of the appellant.<br><br>
"Further, in some instances it was apparent that insufficient effort
was made to ensure that what appeared to be accurate on a somewhat
superficial view of the material was in fact accurate since further
investigation showed that it was not."<br><br>
SIAC was set up in 1997 and had its jurisdiction extended in the
aftermath of the 11 September attacks to hear appeals against the Home
Secretary's power to certify a person to be an international terrorist
and detain them under Part 4 of the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security
Act 2001.<br><br>
In all but one of 16 appeals the SIAC judges have ruled that the totality
of the evidence, both open and secret, has established a "reasonable
suspicion" that the detainee is involved or linked to terrorism. But
they have also acknowledged that their rulings are bound by the House of
Lords judgment that found the detention to be unlawful.<br><br>
At the end of this month SIAC will hear the first challenges to the Home
Secretary's power of certification after the House of Lords ruled that
detention without trial was a fundamental breach of the men's human
rights. <br><br>
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