Judge allows secret services to hide evidence in civil lawsuits
• Ruling prompted by UK Guantánamo torture cases
• Lawyers decry attack on basic principle of law
MI5, MI6 and the police will be able to withhold evidence from defendants and their lawyers in civil cases for the first time, the high court ruled today.
In a move that has widespread implications for open justice, Mr Justice Silber agreed with the security and intelligence agencies that “secret government information” could remain hidden from individuals who are suing them.
Mr Justice Silber’s ruling came in the case of Binyam Mohamed and others who claim that they were ill-treated, and in some cases tortured, in Guantánamo Bay with the knowledge of Britain’s intelligence agencies. The Guardian report may be read in full here.
The ruling is worrying for it’s potential scope. The Guardian notes: “The only occasions when evidence and allegations have been withheld from defendants and their lawyers have been in cases directly linked to “national security” – for example those involving deportations. But if today’s ruling stands, MI5, MI6, the police and other state institutions will be able to withhold relevant information from any civil action, for example for claiming compensation for wrongdoing……Silber was not asked to consider the particular facts of the Mubanga case but to set down a principle. He argued that it would be better for “special advocates” to decide, in secret, what information in the hands of the government and its agents should be disclosed. However, he agreed that the issue raised what he called a “stark question of law”.
I have not had a chance yet to read the judgment in full… but it is worth extracting another quote from the Guardian report pro tem…
Clive Stafford Smith, director of the legal charity Reprieve, said: “When the history books are written, the darkest chapter of our current times will not be torture, but the seeping evil of secrecy, where the ‘national interest’ is conflated with ‘national embarrassment’, and ultimately anything of which the government is ashamed, from parliamentary expenses and working up to torture, becomes secret.”
Surely, no government would wish to abuse the spirit and intendment of this ruling? Would they?
What a disgrace. We are now officially no better than despotic countries and theocracies.
The only difference now between the East and the West is that the West’s wrongdoing is thinly veiled by it’s superficial nod to democracy.
Desert Island anyone?
Natasha – need to read the Silber J judgment…. before I can comment further… doesn’t look too good on the face of the Guardian report.
are we actually allowed to read the judgment? best do it quick before it is forbidden.
i can hear the moans from denning’s tomb…
Silber J should be reversed on appeal. The judges should say NO to further extension of special advocacy unless there is specific statutory authority for it. The judges seem to be happily engaged in judicial legislation. I agree entirely with Clive Stafford-Smith’s comment quited above.