Whatever Happened To Innocent Until Proven Guilty?

C

Colin Phillips

At the Start
Joined
Dec 22, 2003
Messages
13,268
Location
Talbot Green
Detainees at Guantanamo Bay and Belmarsh, house arrest for anyone the Home Secretary fancies, Sinn Fein being fined and MPs being barred from Westminster.

All this without any trial, just accusations.

Where will it end?

Colin
 
Hopefully with Tony Blair and Charles Clarke locked up .

No government in my lifetime has shown such little respect for the rule of law . Now we have the revelations about Lord Goldsmith , massive cuts planned in legal aid, bastards
 
I have given my views on the illegal war elsewhere and often, but I believe that the evidence exists to justify the withdrawal of funds from Sinn Fein. To talk of it as a "fine" is not strictly correct as it is the withholding of allowances - so not taking away, just not giving. The Independent Monitoring Commission has recommended this action and Sinn Fein has the right of appeal.
 
Wot are the revelations about Lord Goldsmith? Not being privy to the Daily Wail, Ardross, I seek enlightenment... ;)
 
For readers of certain publications, these are not new. Lord Goldsmith, the Attorney General, gave a written submission to the PM which almost certainly said that to go to war with Iraq was illegal. He never gave another. The Guardian discovered that two close colleagues of Mr Blair and members of the number 10 inner circle, Lord Falconer and Baroness Morgan, wrote a summary of what is referred to as Lord Goldsmith's advice on the eve of the war, which was the document distributed before parliament voted.

The deputy legal adviser at the Foreign Office, Elizabeth Wilmshurst, resigned before the war saying that an attack had no legal legitimacy and would amount to a "crime of aggression".

The Guardian has been pressing for some time for the release of the Attorney General's original submission to be released under the Freedom of Information Act and they have now been joined by most of the media and the opposition parties.

Others as diverse as Clare Short and John Major have also called for the release of the documents. The government has refused, claiming that it would not be in the public interest.
 
I don't believe Sinn Fein should have their allowances withdrawn. They are elected representatives and as such should be given equal opportunity to represent those that elected them, regardless of what they are involved in.

It's not that I feel any particular sympathy for them. The problem is that if this is allowed to happen without being properly challenged, because there is overwhelming anti Sinn Fein feeling - it opens the door to allowing it in less popular situations.
 
I cannot believe that the usually intelligent membership of this forum believe that the IRA were not behind the robbery and that Sinn Fein had no knowledge of its planning. Even the official Sinn Fein standpoint on the issue has changed from "Outrage at suggestions that the IRA - and by implication Sinn Fein - may have been involved in the £22 million bank robbery in Northern Ireland" to "The IRA say they were not involved. We can only take them at their word."

Surely there is no one in Ireland who is naive enough to believe that Sinn Fein and the IRA are totally separate entities?

Tony Blair has done plenty wrong - try waging an illegal war for starters - but those who are suggesting that he would deliberately sabotage the peace talks need some sort of counselling. Blair is a seeker after his place in history and he was so close to achieving, or being a party to the achievement of, what has been sought for a generation.

While Sinn Fein has been consistent in refusing to agree to a wording in the agreement that would renounce "criminality" the following robberies have been committed, in addition to that at the Northern Bank:

Theft from Makro in Dunmurry on 23rd May

The abduction of people and the robbery of goods from the Strabane branch of Iceland on 26th September

The abduction of people and the robbery of cigarettes with a market valueof approximately £2m from a bonded delivery vehicle in Belfast on 2nd October

All have the hallmarks of PIRA activities and to condemn the Independent Monitoring Commission as "listeners to intelligence" is a nonsense. For those in England - and even perhaps in Ireland - who don't know it, the IMC includes a former Deputy General of the CIA and a former Deputy Assistant Commissioner in the Metropolitan Police who has worked undercover and was the Met's first ever Director of Intelligence.

I don't know how many have read the reports of the IMC, as I have, but it is plain from them that they have their own sources of information, even some within Sinn Fein and the PIRA, as well as access to British and Irish intelligence information.

To condemn the IMC as yes-men for the British and Irish governments is not dissimilar to the Bush comments on Hans Blix.
 
The IRA are an illegal organisation, Sinn Fein are a political party. Although the two are undoubtedly closely linked, the powers that be were happy enough to distinguish between the two enough to allow Sinn Fein run for elections. That being the case they should be treated as a political party, seperate from the IRA, who are not allowed run for elections.

Either make Sinn fein a proscribed organisation and disallow them from running for elections or treat the as a political party - I've no real arguement which choice is taken - but you canot have a situation where elected representitives are disadvantaged from representing their electorate.

This has nothing to do with what the IRA have or haven't done - or how integrated they are with Sinn Fein.
 
I'm not sure that we are in disagreement on this, so let me ask a hypothetical question. If you knew for sure that Sinn Fein - and I mean the political organisation which had been jibbing against adding "criminal activity" to the "decommissioning of arms" clause in the peace process documentation - was aware in advance of the robbery of the Northern Bank, would you agree with the withholding of allowances from their politicians?
 
... if individuals within Sinn Fein knew about it, then they should face criminal charges and be kicked out of parliament. If you concede that Sinn Fein are the IRA, then Sinn Fein should become a proscribed organisation, and all their members kicked out of parliament - with subsequent bielections to allow those who voted for them to have their views properly represented in parliament.

You cannot on one hand differentiate between Sinn Fein and IRA when the need arises to conduct negotiations and then punish Sinn Fein for the IRA's doings when it becomes politically opportune.
 
After the Northern Bank Robbery and the Robert McCartney murder the IRA found themselves in a big hole and have decided to dig themselves out by offering to murder the murderers of Mr McCartney.

I credit Gerry Adams with enough intelligence that he could not possibly be involved in such a ridiculously stupid reaction.
 
I see that Mr Adams' 'suggestion' that the murderer should wish to give himself up, as he would do, has borne fruit. Kinda like an offer you can't refuse, I imagine? :(
 
It seems that there is no limit to the number of people this government has upset, just as there seems to be no limit to the number of offences they can invent in order to impose a £100 fine on people, but they are still almost certain to be voted back into power.

Bloody strange if you ask me.
 
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