Index on Censorship is proud to host The Index Lecture at this years Guardian Hay Festival on Sunday 24 May. Index on Censorhip editor Jo Glanville will chair the event and human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC is set to discuss and explore the issue of free speech. The event will be held in the Oxfam tent at 8.30 pm. To book tickets and find out more about the festival please click here
Index on Censorship news editor Padraig Reidy was on Richard Bacon’s show on BBC Radio Five Live last night, discussing Jacqui Smith’s ‘least wanted’ list of people barred from the UK.
You can listen to the show here
Index on Censorship has learned that government lawyers are attempting to submit secret evidence on the treatment of former Guantanamo prisoner Binyam Mohamed, as the Foreign Office continues to attempt to prevent the release of potentially damning information about his detention.
In a letter to the judges presiding over the case, Lord Justice Thomas and Mr Justice Lloyd Jones, the Treasury Solicitor has claimed that a Public Interest Immunity certificate could be necessary for any further evidence submitted by the Foreign Secretary, David Miliband. This would allow the Foreign Office to supply evidence to the court in secret, on a basis not open to challenge or scrutiny.
The government is fighting an application by international media organisations, including Index on Censorship, to obtain the release of seven paragraphs that were redacted from an earlier judgment concerning Mohamed’s treatment at the hands of US officials. The Foreign Office had claimed that any release would endanger future intelligence-sharing arrangements with the US, a claim Mohamed’s lawyer, Dinah Rose QC, has described as ‘seriously misleading’.
Writing in today’s Times, Index on Censorship trustee Sir Ken Macdonald QC makes a compelling argument against privacy laws, which he sees as a tool of the rich, powerful and famous:
‘[I]f privacy protection were ever to chill our press as it has frozen irascible comment in other parts of the world, we would pay a very high price indeed for underscoring the marketability of film stars and footballers. This is because, like libel, privacy protection is expensive. It is not equally available and it does not belong to everyone. It is almost entirely driven by power and wealth. The rich man may be as free as any tramp to sleep on a bench, but he is rather more likely to be found at the Dorchester — and indeed in the law courts. In contrast the poor, living cheek by jowl, have never been able to put a price on their secrets. A law inhibiting comment to which only the famous have real access is a poor mechanism for protecting human dignity.’