The High Court has ruled that Justice Secretary Ken Clarke was wrong to stop the BBC filming a terrorist suspect held for seven years without trial. The court said there was public interest in interviewing Babar Ahmad, due to the exceptional nature of the case.
The Justice Secretary had contended an interview was not necessary to inform the public about Ahmad. The British Muslim denies the charges and is fighting extradition to the US.
After the ruling, the justice secretary said he would not appeal the verdict and would begin negotiations with the BBC about how and when the interview would take place.
The 38-year-old has been in prison pending extradition since 2004, believed to be a record for an unconvicted British citizen. He awaits a final decision on his case by the European Court of Human Rights.
Ahmad is accused of raising money for terrorists extremists and other offenses, all of which are thought to have been committed in the UK. He has not been charged or faced trial in this country and denies any wrongdoing.
Last year, over 140,000 people signed an official government e-petition calling for him to be tried in the UK, causing MPs to include his case in two Parliamentary debates.
After the ruling, the Ministry of Justice issued a statement saying the length of time taken in the Ahmad extradition case was "unacceptable", and blamed a backlog of 150,000 cases at the European Court of Human Rights for the delay. It added that the judge had upheld the Prison Service's general policy on refusing media interview requests with prisons unless there were "exceptional circumstances".
Continued on Page 47
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
