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Civil liberties - new material (77)

01 January 2010

Joint Study on global practices in relation to secret detention in the context of countering terrorism of the special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms, Martin Scheinin, Manfred Nowak and Jeremy Sarkin. United Nations (A/HRC/13/42) 19.2.10. This report places the CIA’s “secret detention” policy within its historical context, from the Nazis “night and fog” decree through the Soviet Union’s gulags to the “disappearances” favoured by US-backed Latin American dictatorships of the 1970s and 1980s. Importantly, it also examines the UK’s complicity in the CIA’s extraordinary rendition programme, considering the example of Mustafa Setmariam Nassar who may have been tortured on the protectorate of Diego Garcia. The report says that the UK knowingly took “advantage of the situation of secret detention by sending questions to the State detaining the person or by soliciting or receiving information from persons who are being kept in secret detention”, citing the cases of Binyam Mohamed, Salahuddin Amin, Zeeshan Siddiqui, Rangzieb Ahmed and Rashid Rauf. Available as a free download at:
http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/docs/13session/A-HRC-13-42.pdf

Information case law update, Dr David McArdle. SCOLAG Legal Journal No. 388 (February) 2010, pp. 32-33. Digest of cases relating to data protection, freedom of information and the media.