ABSTRACT

The grandiloquence of the ill-phrased “war on terror”, with its invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and the state abnegation of cherished fundamental rights and freedoms that had been painstakingly cultivated through centuries of procedural and substantive legal protections, is well recognized. Military commissions were then used to try them for terrorist offences, and this too is well documented. Messrs Belhaj clearly demonstrates a decisive shift to a muscular approach to overseeing national security, at precisely the time when terrorism concerns are most heightened, such as to imply a judicial obligation to uphold fundamental freedoms rooted in the Magna Carta. By January 2015, as the pressure began to mount, a senior Bush administration official appears to have confirmed that “Interrogations of US prisoners took place at a Central Intelligence Agency black site on the British overseas territory of Diego Garcia”.