As five of the nine British detainees in Guantanamo Bay prepared to fly back home this week, David Blunkett, the home secretary, compared their much-criticised treatment at the hands of their American jailers with the way in which Britain has dealt with its own foreign terror suspects. "I believe the system we have put in place is fair and open; people have a right to legal representation and to challenge the decisions taken. That is not the case in Guanta-namo Bay," he told a meeting at Harvard Law School. He might not have been quite so smug had he known about the damning judgment by an English court of his handling of a terror suspect held in Bel-marsh high security prison for the past 16 months without charge of trial.
展开▼
