Control orders: try them or release them

Bring these men to trial — or revoke their control orders, from today’s Guardian

Afua Hirsch (the Guardian’s legal correspondent) on the recent change of mind regarding a British-Libyan man who had been under a banning order based on evidence he was not allowed to see as it would have compromised an informant. The Law Lords ruled in June that the man’s (and two others’) human rights had been breached because the gist of the evidence against them had not been revealed to them; the government has decided that releasing him from the order is preferable to revealing the information. Alan Travis, the paper’s home affairs editor, suggests that all of the other orders are likely to be revoked.

Clearly, it is contrary to the rule of law for people to be subjected to any kind of punishment, which is what a control order is, even if it is not formally presented as one, without being charged with or convicted of any offence. This is something that goes on either in countries which are at war, which Britain is not, or under dictatorship or some form of pseudo-democracy. Significantly in the case of Cerie Bullivant, no further evidence has been offered against him since his control order was lifted; it was claimed that he intended to go abroad and fight. All this came after they had driven him near to a mental breakdown and wrecked his marriage.

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