The outrageous detention of Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald’s partner for nine hours at
Heathrow airport yesterday gives a new meaning to the “special relationship”
between Britain and the United States .
This was clearly a joint operation of overt intimidation by
the burgeoning Anglo-US security state against the partner of a journalist who
has helped expose the covert operations of GCHQ in Britain
and the NSA in America .
David Miranda was held incommunicado for the maximum nine
hours allowed under the Terrorism 2000 Act. His property – including his mobile
phone – was taken from him and he was not allowed legal representation.
Under schedule seven of the Terrorism Act 2000, the police
can detain people at British border points with or without probable cause. The
detained person does not have the right to a lawyer and it is a criminal
offence to refuse to answer questions, whether or not a lawyer is present.
Greenwald only knew of the arrest three hours into the
interrogation when a “security official” – who only gave his number 203654 – called
him at 5.30am on the east coast of the US .
His partner who is a Brazilian citizen was in transit from Berlin to Rio when seized.
Neither Brazilian officials nor Guardian
lawyers were allowed access to him.
It was a blatant act of revenge by the US and UK authorities to punish anyone
associated with whistleblower Edward Snowden’s revelations about Prism, the
mass snooping programme on US, British citizens and others around the world.
Miranda did not represent any terrorist threat, and the
authorities knew that. His arrest was purely to punish his partner Greenwald for
analysing the data released by Snowden, who remains in Russia on temporary asylum to escape arrest by
the US
authorities.
In enacting the Terrorism Act in 2000, New Labour Home
Secretary David Blunkett flouted human rights and deeply enshrined principles,
including the right to remain silent. When Blunkett was warned that it was a
catch-all law, he notoriously poured scorn on human rights’ organisations.
In 2001 New Labour’s attorney general Lord Goldsmith, who
approved the legal cover for the attack on Iraq , used the terror laws to detain
asylum seekers for 10 days, despite judicial opposition.
In 2008, financial crime experts were shocked at the use of
anti-terror laws to seize the assets of Icelandic banks, when
Reykjavik-based Landsbanki Islands
bank got into trouble.
In 2010, the Equality and Human Rights Commission expressed
its concerns
about the introduction of body scanners at ports of entry, again under the
pretext of terrorism threats. It was alarmed about the infringement of the
right to privacy and access and use of intimate body images,
The repeated use and abuse of the anti-terror laws by state
forces has been so blatant that eminent experts such as David Anderson QC, the
independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, felt obliged to admonish
the police.
In 2011 he cautioned the police over the arrest of six North African street
cleaners, which had been prompted by a canteen joke. During the Olympics, in
June 2012 Anderson
stated that you
were just as likely to die of a bee sting as of a terror attack.
Snowden’s revelations, like those of Wikileaks founder Julian
Assange, are doing serious damage to the Obama administration and, with the
help of the compliant British authorities, they are seeking to intimidate,
smear, frame and generally harass anyone involved.
Greenwald has courageously said that he will not be cowed.
He deserves total support. While anti-terror legislation remains on the statute
books it will be used by the state in whatever way it sees fit. An argument if
there ever was one that a new
democratic constitution for the 21st century that enshrines basic rights is
an urgent necessity.
Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary
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