No justice in the UK

Four years ago, G4S guards killed Jimmy Mubenga by restraining him inappropriately during a deportation - effectively asphyixiating him. But today, a British jury refused to convict them:

Three private security guards who restrained the Angolan deportee Jimmy Mubenga have been cleared of manslaughter by a jury at the Old Bailey.

The 46-year-old died after being restrained by the G4S guards on a British Airways flight on 12 October 2010. Terrence Hughes, 53, Colin Kaler, 52 and Stuart Tribelnig, 39, were accused of manslaughter by forcing Mubenga’s head down and restricting his breathing as the flight prepared to take off at Heathrow airport. The jury cleared them of the charges on Tuesday after a six-week trial.

The court had heard how fellow passengers said they heard Mubenga cry out: “I can’t breathe” as he was pinned down in his seat, despite already being handcuffed from behind with his seatbelt on.

The guards said in court that they had not heard him say he could not breathe and had not pushed his head down and forward towards his knees in a position known to risk asphyxia. They said they had been restraining him to stop him hurting himself or other passengers on the plane.

This is bullshit. Those guards were grossly negligent and used unreasonable force - a fact backed by the inquest into Mubenga's death, which found the killing unlawful. There was also suppressed evidence showing a string of racist "jokes" by the killers, which suggests they may have been less than willing to show Mubenga the duty of care he was entitled to. But hey, he was only a deportee, right?

There is no justice in the UK. Those who want it will have to make their own. Suing these racist killers and the company which hired them into the ground in a civil case would be a good start.

Justice for Jimmy Mubenga?

Back in 2010, Jimmy Mubenga died while being deported from the UK after being subjected to positional asphyxia by his guards. Now those guards are facing manslaughter charges:

Three G4S guards are being charged with manslaughter following the death of a man as he was being deported from the UK.

Jimmy Mubenga, 46, died after being restrained by the three on board a plane at Heathrow airport in October 2010.

On Thursday the Crown Prosecution Service said the guards, Stuart Tribelnig, 38, Terry Hughes, 53, and Colin Kaler, 51, would be charged with manslaughter.

Malcolm McHaffie, deputy head of CPS special crime, said: "There is sufficient evidence for a realistic prospect of conviction and it is in the public interest to prosecute Colin Kaler, Terrence Hughes and Stuart Tribelnig."

Good. While I don't think the guards intended to kill Mubenga, they certainly seem to have shown a callous disregard for his life. But meanwhile, G4S, the company which set their organisational culture, gets to escape scot-free. Shouldn't they be on trial as well?

The UK's deportation system claims a life

We've known for a long time that the UK's deportation system is a human rights scandal. A 2008 report from Medical Justice [PDF] found that private security guards hired to accompany deportees engaged in "widespread and seemingly systemic abuse", including beatings, kicking, stomping, and that this sometimes resulted in serious injury. That trend has now reached its nadir with the death of a deportee at the hands of security guards last night:

A man who died while being deported to Angola was being heavily restrained by security guards and had complained of breathing problems before he collapsed, a witness has told Guardian.

Jimmy Mubenga lost consciousness while the British Airways flight was on the runway at Heathrow on Tuesday night. The commercial flight was cancelled and Mubenga was taken to hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Kevin Wallis, a passenger on the aircraft, said he had been sitting across the aisle from Mubenga and watched as three security guards restrained him with what he believed to be excessive force.

Wallis said he heard Mubenga complain: "I can't breathe, I can't breathe" for at least 10 minutes before he lost consciousness, and later observed that handcuffs had been used in the restraint.

The death is being blamed on positional asphyxia, an inability to breathe due to the position Mubenga was restrained in. But the real cause is the attitude of the security guards, who want deportees to shut up and be quiet, will use force to achieve that, and ultimately don't give a shit about their health. A similarly callous approach led to the death of Joy Gardner at the hands of police in 1993; because she wouldn't shut up, they wrapped her head in 13 feet of duct tape, and smothered her to death.

UK police are apparently investigating, but it'll almost certainly be the usual whitewash. The UK police care as little for deportees as the security thugs, and certainly don't want to create a precedent of holding people accountable for excessive use of force. After all, it could be applied to them.

Meanwhile, its worth noting that the company these guards worked for - G4S - is one of those the government wants to run our prisons. Given their involvement in this incident, and in assaults and beatings, they should be barred from security operations in New Zealand. Their organisational culture is clearly incapable of treating prisoners lawfully, let alone with the level of dignity and humanity required by the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. If the government ignores this and hires them, then they will be directly responsible for the inevitable subsequent abuses.

Deportation to Algeria is unsafe

That's the conclusion of the UK Court of Appeal, ruling on the cases of three Algerian men the British government wants to get rid of. While the court found that diplomatic assurances that deportees would not be tortured could generally be relied upon, it also found that there was strong evidence that the particular individuals concerned would face a real rsk of torture or degrading treatment, and so halted efforts to deport them.

The parallels with the Zaoui case should be obvious.

A bad habit

One of the most shocking things about the Ahmed Zaoui case - besides the pissing on legal principles dating back to the Magna Carta - was the incompetance and laziness it revealed in our intelligence services and police force. First we learned from the Refugee Status Appeals Authority that the SIS had apparently relied on Google to compile their "evidence" against Zaoui, assembling unsourced news extracts and internet material "with no attempt to excise opinion from fact". Then we learned that the police's threat assessment - used to justify Zaoui's solitary confinement - was compiled the same way, and relied upon an internet conspiracy website from conspiracy theorist Lyndon LaRouche.

Unfortunately, they seem to be making a habit of it. According to Keith Locke, much of the government's case against Rayed Mohammed Abdullah Ali, who was recently deported on "national security" grounds, appears to have been sourced from Google. The first hint was the government referring to a CBS news story which erroneously claimed that Ali had been released from prison in Saudi Arabia. But it's worse:

"...much of the New Zealand government's case against Rayed Ali seems to have been constructed on misleading 'googled' information. A Google search brings up the 9/11 Commission report, with a line accusing Mr Ali of giving 'extremist speeches' in a Phoenix mosque. This is included in New Zealand Immigration's dossier against Mr Ali and doesn't seem to have been checked - although the New Zealand media have, subsequently, discredited the accusation.

"The dossier also contained the easily googleable fact that September 11 bomber Hani Hanjour (briefly) flatted with Rayed Ali - but New Zealand Immigration seems to have made no attempt to discover Mr Ali's explanation or why the FBI, after interviewing him, was happy to let him stay in the United States.

"The only non-googleable "fact" in the dossier was an accusation from a 'not yet discloseable source' of a 'direct association' between Rayed Ali and September 11 bomber Nawaf al-Hamzi. Of course, this could be another intelligence agency making a 'google' mistake, because Rayed Ali had been met on his arrival in Florida in 1997 by a old school friend with a similar name, Bandar al-Hamzi, no relation to Nawaf.

No matter what you think of Mr Ali, surely deporting someone should require better evidence than this...

Deportation to disappearance

Last week, we learned that the government had deported Rayed Mohammed Abdullah Ali, an associate of the September 11th hijackers, on national security grounds. Now, we learn that he has disappeared. The government will not say who they handed Ali to in Saudi Arabia, and his family have not heard from him.

Saudi Arabia is a torture state, where according to Human Rights Watch,

Arbitrary detention, mistreatment and torture of detainees... remain serious concerns.

The US State Departmnet's 2005 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for Saudi Arabia notes that prisoners are subjected to

beatings, whippings, and sleep deprivation. In addition, there were allegations of beatings with sticks and suspension from bars by handcuffs.

and that people are often arbitrarily detained, in violation of both international and Saudi domestic law.

And we deported a man to this place - a man who, given his association with terrorists, would be likely to be treated in exactly this manner.

New Zealand is a party to the UN Convention Against Torture. Article 3 of the Convention states

1. No State Party shall expel, return ("refouler") or extradite a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.

2. For the purpose of determining whether there are such grounds, the competent authorities shall take into account all relevant considerations including, where applicable, the existence in the State concerned of a consistent pattern of gross, flagrant or mass violations of human rights.

(Emphasis added)

In addition, s9 of the BORA affirms the right of everyone not to be subjected to torture or cruel, degrading, or disproportionately severe treatment or punishment. And the Minister has to consider that right. In their landmark decision on Ahmed Zaoui, the Supreme Court ruled that

the Minister, in deciding whether to certify under s 72 of the Immigration Act 1987 that the continued presence of a person constitutes a threat to national security, and members of the Executive Council, in deciding whether to advise the Governor-General to order deportation under s 72, are not to so decide or advise if they are satisfied that there are substantial grounds for believing that, as a result of the deportation, the person would be in danger of being arbitrarily deprived of life or of being subject to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

(Emphasis added)

Section 72 is exactly the same clause Rayed Ali was deported under.

So, the question is whether the Minister considered the possibility that Ali would be tortured or disappeared if deported, and if he did, how the hell he concluded that that there were not "substantial grounds for believing" that it would happen, given Saudi Arabia's appalling human rights record. Perhaps a question someone should raise in Parliament?

Deportation and "national security"

The government has deported a man, Rayed Mohammed Abdullah Ali, on national security grounds. He was a previous associate of one of the 9/11 hijackers who had been a flight student in both the US and New Zealand. But despite FBI suspicions, he was never charged with any offence, and was allowed to return to Qatar after 9/11.

While the mouth-breathers down in the sewer are crowing, this does raise concerns. There are two clauses in the Immigration Act 1987 which allow deportation in these sorts of cases. The first, s73, allows the deportation of suspected terrorists. It requires that the Minister has "reason to believe" that the person is a member of a terrorist organisation, or (more relevantly in this case)

That the person will, if permitted to remain in New Zealand, engage in, or facilitate the commission of, any act of terrorism.

(Emphasis added).

The "problem" with this is that it requires some evidence, however minimal, and that the order can be challenged in court. So instead, the government chose to rely on s72, which requires no reasons and allows no right of appeal. If the Minister of Immigration thinks you are a Bad Person, you are out. This is an autocratic provision and a prima facie violation of the Bill of Rights Act's affirmation of the right to justice. While the mouth-breathers will no doubt talk about how such a draconian law is "neccessary" to protect New Zealand from terrorism, I think it is also necessary to ensure that government decisions are reviewable and that attention is paid to justice. And for those who disagree, I can only point out that it is rather rich to complain about "Helengrad" while explicitly supporting autocratic and dictatorial behaviour (with thanks to Bernard Darnton for that little line).

Interestingly, the government's review of the Immigration Act proposes bringing national security provisions together with those covering ordinary deportations and removals to create one list of criteria and one streamlined process. While having concerns about where and how decisions would be made (a key theme of the review seems to be to devolve important decisions to unaccountable, faceless officials who would make them in secret), a consequence of this would be that national security decisions would be subject to appeal and independent humanitarian review. That's certainly an improvement on the current process, and its something which should be incorporated into legislation even if the review concludes that a single expulsion provision is undesirable.