IN THE COURTS
reprinted from PRIVATE EYE, 1113 - 20/08/2004

THE shocking appeal court ruling from Lord Justice Laws last week which allows evidence obtained under torture to be used in British courts (and which appears to put the United Kingdom at odds with international law) did not surprise Laws' former colleagues at the Bar.

They say he has never really shaken off the mantle of being senior government treasury counsel. He has always been a believer in that old friend of secrecy, the public interest immunity certificate, and he used them regularly as he cut his anti-terrorism teeth: first when representing the government in its pathetic attempt to stop publication of Spycatcher, the well-publicised ramblings of former spook Peter Wright; and again when he represented the government at the inquest into the controversial 1988 shootings of the three unarmed IRA terrorists in Gibraltar, subsequently condemned as unlawful in the European courts.

Elevated to the judicial benches, he was dubbed Mr Justice (lack of) Laws, for endorsing a 180-hour community service order in return for a plea bargain from big city fraudster Roger Levitt. And he gave the go-ahead for Inspector Knacker to appeal against a court ruling to pay compensation to 16-year-old John Wilson, who was beaten up and seriously injured by unidentifiable officers during a riot. The subsequent appeal was so weak that appeal judges threw it out without Wilson's lawyers having to put up an argument.

Human rights groups and lawyers hope the Lords will make equally short shrift of Laws' latest ruling.