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The Metropolitan Police have paid a "substantial sum" in compensation to a man who found out when he was 26 that his father was Bob Lambert, a notorious undercover police officer. He had grown up believing that his father was a left-wing activist who had fled abroad. His mother became aware of Lambert's real identity at the same time as her son, after reading about Lambert in the papers. The Met previously paid her £425,000 in compensation due to the trauma she suffered.
According to a report originally published in The Telegraph, the French authorities have turned down a UK offer of drones assistance to try to prevent departures of boats trying to cross the Channel. However, it is unclear from the report whether the UK authorities sought to lend the drone itself to the French, or instead wanted access to French airspace to monitor beaches.
Prisoners held in the Armagh and H-Block prisons between 1976 and 1981 were subjected to "systemic inhuman and degrading treatment" that "violated international human rights standards and breached common law and statute", with the full knowledge of the British government, an independent inquiry has found.
40 organisations, including Statewatch, have written to the European Commission calling for a ban on blanket telecommunications data retention. Judgments in a number of cases concerning data retention are due to be handed down by the Court of Justice today. The Commissioner for Home Affairs has previously expressed a desire for new legislation on the issue, and the member states have long been keen on new EU-wide measures.
A joint statement signed by 70+ NGOs and human rights organisations from across Europe and beyond.
The Grenfell Inquiry, which is investigating the fire that killed 72 people in the Grenfell Tower block of flats in west London in June 2017, heard in mid-September that "emails, documents and design drawings" relating to the refurbishment of the tower with flammable cladding may have been "lost forever".
A study commissioned by the European Parliament's Women's Rights and Gender Equality committee (FEMM), looking at the EU's response to the 'Global Gag Rule', which "blocks US aid funds for organizations or groups that perform abortion services, provide information about sexual and reproductive health rights, and advocate for abortion."
A major operation involving judicial and law enforcement authorities from Belgium, France, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, supported by Europol and Eurojust, led to the dismantling of a large network of criminals smuggling migrants in life threatening conditions across the English Channel.
The Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Bill would, if approved, give explicit legal permission for certain state agents to commit crimes in the course of their duties, but does not specify which crimes are covered. There is fierce opposition to the proposed measures.
Anti-semitic campaigns were launched by the neo-Nazi Nordic Resistance Movement in Denmark, Iceland, Norway and Sweden recently, in the week leading up to Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement), the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. Actions were taken in almost 20 different cities including direct confrontation of Jewish worshippers, putting up anti-semitic posters and distributing flyers. The organisation was issued with a cease-and-desist order by the Finnish Supreme Court in late September, the first such order handed down in Finland since the 1970s.
UN human rights experts have called on MPs in the Westminster parliament to reject the Overseas Operations (service personnel and Veterans) Bill, which seeks to prevent prosecutions of British armed forces personnel for serious crimes such as torture and unlawful killing.
A study by EASO looking at how member states have implemented the 2013 Asylum Procedures Directive, which allows for the use of "border procedures" for a rapid assessment of asylum applications. Under measures recently-proposed as part of the Pact on Migration and Asylum, border procedures - and accompanying large-scale detention - would become far more widely-used.
A report by Greenpeace and Liberties details measures taken by a variety of EU governments in response to the coronavirus pandemic. The report argues that governments have taken "political advantage of the pandemic" by curbing "the right to protest, free speech, access to information and freedom of association."
The Greek police have handed files to the prosecution authorities alleging the involvement of 35 foreign nationals in migrant smuggling. The files list offences such as "forming and joining a criminal organisation, espionage, violation of state secrets, as well as violations of the Immigration Code".
The Dutch police have started employing an array of "predictive policing" technologies, in projects that the police themselves describe as "living labs". Amnesty say that one such project in the city of Roemund treats the population "as 'guinea pigs' under mass surveillance and discriminates against people with Eastern European nationalities."
The European Commission and Council want to extend the 'Prüm Decisions' - which mandate the interlinking of national DNA, fingerprint and vehicle registration databases - to include facial recognition. At a hearing last week, MEPs and experts raised serious concerns over the idea.
The Coronavirus Act, which was introduced by the UK government in March and which sets out an extensive and extreme set of emergency powers, has been renewed in a vote by MPs. They were granted just 90 minutes to debate the measures.
The EU is moving toward renewal of the 'Joint Way Forward with Afghanistan', an informal agreement that facilitates the deportation of Afghans present in the EU. A secret document from July, published here, sets out the member states' demands to the Commission for the renewed agreement. It includes a call for "the notion of vulnerable groups" to be "limited", which would ease the deportation of people who may otherwise qualify for protection.
It has emerged in recent days that the UK government is considering the possibility of housing asylum-seekers in camps outside the country.
Barbed wire fences and microchipped armbands to control entry await the future residents of a forthcoming "closed camp" for refugees and migrants on the Greek island of Samos.
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