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BNP’s Barnbrook fails to appear at hearing

July 21st, 2009 | No Comments

Meeting to consider whether Richard Barnbrook brought his office into disrepute is cancelled after he phones panel to tell them he has been signed off work for stress

A meeting to consider whether Richard Barnbrook, one of the most senior elected members of the British National party, had brought his office into disrepute was cut short today after he failed to turn up on stress grounds.

Barnbrook, who is both a London assembly member and sits on Barking and Dagenham council, could be suspended amid charges that he brought his office into disrepute by falsely claiming three murders had taken place over a three-week period in the Barking and Dagenham area.

But the meeting was cut short after Barnbrook telephoned just before his hearing was due to begin to say that he had been signed off for stress for two weeks by his GP.

Barnbrook’s failure to submit written evidence to the hearing resulted in the panel ruling it would be unfair to continue in his absence.

Today’s meeting will be reconvened on either 12 August or 4 September.

Barnbrook faced a grilling before the standards committees of both the Greater London authority and the council to explain his position and take questions over comments he made in an interview posted on the internet, which were subsequently removed.

An investigation, conducted for the standards committees of the GLA and Barking and Dagenham council concluded that Barnbrook brought his office and the respective authorities into disrepute after falsely claiming in the interview that three murders had taken place over a three week period in the Barking and Dagenham area.

If the committees rule there was a breach of the code, Barnbrook faces a range of possible sanctions, including up to six months’ suspension from elected office.

The complaint against Barnbrook was first lodged last September after he claimed in an interview posted on YouTube and his own website that a girl had been murdered within the borough within the past three weeks. “We don’t know who’s done it. Her girlfriend was attacked inside an educational institute,” Barnbrook said in the prerecorded interview, in which he sought to highlight failings in tackling knife crime.

He also said that two weeks previously “there was another attack by knives on the streets of Barking and Dagenham where two people were murdered”.

Valerie Rush, a Labour cabinet member at the local authority, accused Barnbrook of “openly and outrageously” lying to “whip up fears in the London community”.

In her complaint to the GLA and the council, Rush said Barnbrook had acted in a way that brought his honesty and integrity as a councillor into disrepute.

Barnbrook, who is one of 12 BNP councillors in Barking and Dagenham, said that he knew at the time that he made the statements that “there had been no fatalities in Barking and Dagenham”, according to a report documenting the investigation into the complaint.

Barnbrook nevertheless refused to apologise for the statements “until knife crime is over”.

This meant that the interview – filmed by Simon Darby, the BNP’s deputy leader, who works part-time for Barnbrook in the London assembly – was posted on the internet despite Barnbrook knowing the statements were incorrect, the report noted.

The Metropolitan police confirmed that there had been no murders or incidents resulting in critical injuries requiring intensive care in the time period cited, and that murders in the area were actually decreasing.

By the time the draft investigation report was published, Barnbrook said he did not accept that “the inaccuracy of my statement was deliberate”. He also stated: “I did not know that the data in the recording was incorrect. I would not have posted the recording if I had known that it was incorrect.”

Barnbrook also insisted that “once I realised that the data was incorrect, the recording was removed from the internet on my instruction within 24 hours”.

The final report into the investigation found that Barnbrook’s original claim that he knew what he was saying was untrue “seems at odds” with the principles of honesty and integrity.

The report said: “If the public were aware that Mr Barnbrook was in fact putting out statements that he knew were false, we consider that his could reasonably be regarded as undermining public confidence in both members and the authorities as a whole in being able to fulfil their function.”

Any sanctions meted out to Barnbrook can be challenged on appeal to the president of the Adjudication Panel for England.

If an appeal is accepted, the body can overturn the finding or vary the sanction.

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Tories to force Commons vote on hacker case

July 15th, 2009 | No Comments

Shadow home secretary says he hopes MPs will send a message to the government that hacker should be tried in UK not US

The Conservatives will today use a Commons vote to signal their opposition to the proposal to extradite Gary McKinnon to the US to face trial for hacking into American military computers.

Chris Grayling, the shadow home secretary, said he hoped MPs would “send a message” to the government that McKinnon, who has Asperger’s syndrome, ought to be put on trial in the UK and not in the US, where he faces a sentence of up to 60 years.

McKinnon is still using the courts to try to block his extradition and MPs will not vote directly on his case. But the Tories have tabled a motion expressing “very great concern” about the way the extradition system is working and calling for the Extradition Act 2003 to be reformed “at the earliest opportunity”.

The Tories are hoping that the Liberal Democrats and some Labour MPs will support them when the Commons votes on the motion this afternoon.

Ministers claim that the act, which affects extradition between the UK and the US, has benefited both countries and that the government does not have the power to stop McKinnon being sent to face trial in the US.

McKinnon, who is being backed by a high-profile Daily Mail campaign, yesterday asked the high court to overturn the refusal of Keir Starmer, the director of public prosecutions, to put him on trial in the UK on charges of computer misuse. If there were no UK prosecution, McKinnon would inevitably be extradited to stand trial in the US, the judges heard.

The court reserved judgment and said it hoped to give a decision in writing by the end of July.

McKinnon has admitted computer hacking and leaving a message in US military systems saying “I will continue to disrupt”, but his lawyers said his intention was only to cause “temporary impairment”, not lasting damage to the system.

They argue that his extradition would lead to “disastrous consequences”, including possible psychosis and suicide, because of his medical condition, which is on the autistic spectrum.

This morning Grayling told BBC Radio 4′s Today programme: “People on the autistic spectrum find it very difficult to deal with a big change in surroundings. To extradite somebody in that position to the US to a strange environment is undoubtedly going to cause health issues for Gary McKinnon. In the past, where there have been similar cases, we have seen trials take place in the UK.

“There is no doubt that an offence has been committed; Gary McKinnon has admitted that. But why on earth is this trial not taking place in the UK?

“I hope the House of Commons will send a message to the government that really this is not what the extradition system is supposed to do. These new rules were set up for very serious offences, for terror offences. I don’t believe parliament ever intended them to be used to extradite somebody with autism issues to face a charge like this.

“There are some suggestions that the home secretary has more powers to intervene than have so far been used.”

But the Home Office dismissed this claim. It said that the home secretary did not have the power to block McKinnon’s extradition.

“The case of Gary McKinnon remains before the courts. As such it would not be appropriate for us to comment on it in detail, except to say that this case has been subjected to the closest attention and to the greatest possible procedural fairness. The home secretary [then Jacqui Smith] gave very careful consideration before deciding in July 2006 to order extradition,” the statement said.

“It is important to be clear that, under the terms of the Extradition Act 2003, the home secretary must order extradition unless certain limited conditions are met. The courts have already said that those conditions are not met in Mr McKinnon’s case; and his attempts to defeat the US request have since been dismissed by the high court, the House of Lords and the European court of human rights.

“The information that must be provided by both the United States and the United Kingdom is effectively the same. The United Kingdom must demonstrate ‘probable cause’ to the United States courts, while the United States must demonstrate ‘reasonable suspicion’ to ours.

“Extradition is a key crime-fighting measure in our increasingly globalised world and, within what the law permits, we give maximum assistance to all of our extradition partners.”

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Tories to force Commons vote on hacker case

July 15th, 2009 | No Comments

Shadow home secretary says he hopes MPs will send a message to the government that hacker should be tried in UK not US

The Conservatives will today use a Commons vote to signal their opposition to the proposal to extradite Gary McKinnon to the US to face trial for hacking into American military computers.

Chris Grayling, the shadow home secretary, said he hoped MPs would “send a message” to the government that McKinnon, who has Asperger’s syndrome, ought to be put on trial in the UK and not in the US, where he faces a sentence of up to 60 years.

McKinnon is still using the courts to try to block his extradition and MPs will not vote directly on his case. But the Tories have tabled a motion expressing “very great concern” about the way the extradition system is working and calling for the Extradition Act 2003 to be reformed “at the earliest opportunity”.

The Tories are hoping that the Liberal Democrats and some Labour MPs will support them when the Commons votes on the motion this afternoon.

Ministers claim that the act, which affects extradition between the UK and the US, has benefited both countries and that the government does not have the power to stop McKinnon being sent to face trial in the US.

McKinnon, who is being backed by a high-profile Daily Mail campaign, yesterday asked the high court to overturn the refusal of Keir Starmer, the director of public prosecutions, to put him on trial in the UK on charges of computer misuse. If there were no UK prosecution, McKinnon would inevitably be extradited to stand trial in the US, the judges heard.

The court reserved judgment and said it hoped to give a decision in writing by the end of July.

McKinnon has admitted computer hacking and leaving a message in US military systems saying “I will continue to disrupt”, but his lawyers said his intention was only to cause “temporary impairment”, not lasting damage to the system.

They argue that his extradition would lead to “disastrous consequences”, including possible psychosis and suicide, because of his medical condition, which is on the autistic spectrum.

This morning Grayling told BBC Radio 4′s Today programme: “People on the autistic spectrum find it very difficult to deal with a big change in surroundings. To extradite somebody in that position to the US to a strange environment is undoubtedly going to cause health issues for Gary McKinnon. In the past, where there have been similar cases, we have seen trials take place in the UK.

“There is no doubt that an offence has been committed; Gary McKinnon has admitted that. But why on earth is this trial not taking place in the UK?

“I hope the House of Commons will send a message to the government that really this is not what the extradition system is supposed to do. These new rules were set up for very serious offences, for terror offences. I don’t believe parliament ever intended them to be used to extradite somebody with autism issues to face a charge like this.

“There are some suggestions that the home secretary has more powers to intervene than have so far been used.”

But the Home Office dismissed this claim. It said that the home secretary did not have the power to block McKinnon’s extradition.

“The case of Gary McKinnon remains before the courts. As such it would not be appropriate for us to comment on it in detail, except to say that this case has been subjected to the closest attention and to the greatest possible procedural fairness. The home secretary [then Jacqui Smith] gave very careful consideration before deciding in July 2006 to order extradition,” the statement said.

“It is important to be clear that, under the terms of the Extradition Act 2003, the home secretary must order extradition unless certain limited conditions are met. The courts have already said that those conditions are not met in Mr McKinnon’s case; and his attempts to defeat the US request have since been dismissed by the high court, the House of Lords and the European court of human rights.

“The information that must be provided by both the United States and the United Kingdom is effectively the same. The United Kingdom must demonstrate ‘probable cause’ to the United States courts, while the United States must demonstrate ‘reasonable suspicion’ to ours.

“Extradition is a key crime-fighting measure in our increasingly globalised world and, within what the law permits, we give maximum assistance to all of our extradition partners.”

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Tories plan youths’ phone and bike confiscation

July 14th, 2009 | No Comments

Chris Grayling outlines ’21st century clip around the ear’ for young troublemakers

Police should be given powers to seize young troublemakers mobile phones or bikes as punishment for antisocial behaviour, the Tories said today.

Chris Grayling, the shadow home secretary, said he wanted officers to confiscate such possessions for up to a month to deter badly behaved youths.

He said losing their phone or bike would be a “21st century clip around the ear” for youngsters who stepped out of line, and would help disrupt gang activity.

The idea is part of wider plans to give officers more discretion to hand out punishments in communities blighted by antisocial “yobs”.

Grayling has already suggested young people could be grounded by the authorities and only allowed out to go to school.

In a speech to a thinktank in central London, he said government policies aimed at tackling louts, such as antisocial behaviour orders, were “over-prescriptive” and “over-bureaucratic”.

He told an audience at the Centre for Policy Studies that all police officers ought to be given more discretion and better punishments to deal with the “Nokia generation”.

Informal community punishments would help police deal with antisocial behaviour without leaving troublemakers with a long-term criminal record that could harm their employment prospects, he said.

He said: “If we are to deter potential troublemakers, the consequences they face have to be relevant to the lives they lead, and to be immediate. Otherwise why would they stop what they are doing?

“I’d like to see police given the power to confiscate, temporarily, a young troublemaker’s mobile phone, removing their sim card, with all their mobile numbers and text messages on it, for a fortnight or a month; not permanently, but long enough to make a point.”

Earlier this month Alan Johnson, the home secretary, admitted the government had been complacent in tackling loutish behaviour.

He revealed that some victims of antisocial behaviour are having to wait up to two years for the people who targeted them to be dealt with.

While accepting that the government had “dragged its feet” on the issue, Johnson said he wanted to give it an “extra push”.

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Anti-terror chief warns of budget cuts

July 7th, 2009 | No Comments

• John Yates says unit faces first cutbacks in five years
• Concern over complacency and ‘criminal justice fatigue’

Counter-terrorism police are facing their first budget cuts since the emergence of the Islamist extremist threat in the UK, the country’s most senior anti-terror officer warned today.

Assistant commissioner John Yates said that after five years of generous growth, his unit faced making cuts in the year before London hosts the 2012 Olympic games.

He expressed concerns that the public were growing tired of the fight against terrorism and by the use of control orders, which the House of Lords said last month contravened the European convention on human rights.

Speaking at the Association of Chief Police Officers conference in Manchester, Yates said he would be “naive” to believe the fight against al-Qaida would escape the recession and the impact of a £90bn hole in public finances.

“We are going to have to robustly look at where we can make savings, he said. “We are already pretty lean but the pressure will be on and I cannot imagine counter-terrorism funding is not going to be affected. If things are not seen to be happening then people will say: ‘Do you really need the money?’”

Yates said attitudes towards counter-terrorism had changed and he was concerned about public complacency. “There’s a criminal justice fatigue around counter-terrorism … around things like control orders. It is difficult because we know what sensitive intelligence is telling us, there is a lot of activity going on out there, a lot of activity which means that the threat is still there.”

Threat levels in the UK remain at severe, which means an attack is highly likely. They may come down to “substantial” in the near future, Yates said, but that still meant an attack was a strong possibility, and made little practical difference to those on the frontline.

“It’s a bit like the weather. The climate is pretty grim but the weather can change,” said Yates.

With the prospect of a static budget in 2011, he said cuts would have to be made to backroom staff initially. Anti-terror police would also be fighting for funds with the Serious and Organised Crime Agency (Soca). Organised crime is responsible for laundering £15bn of criminal profits through the economy, putting 30 tonnes of heroin on the streets each year, organising the trafficking of women and children for sexual purposes, carrying out fraud to the tune of £20bn a year and importing illegal firearms. But the budget for Soca is about £400m, compared with the £2.5bn a year designated for the fight against terrorism, leading to accusations it is not being taken seriously.

The government tomorrow publishes five reports on the threat from serious and organised crime. Senior officers have examined whether to tack on organised crime units to the four counter-terrorist hubs around the country.

Even with such streamlining, Yates said he was under no illusions that staff would have to be cut within counter-terrorism. “Like any part of policing you are always looking at stripping out the back office before you look at the frontline. It would be naive of me to say that is not going to be the case,” he said.

“We are all right for the next two years but there is going to be a comprehensive spending review. Up to 2011 we are fine but thereafter there is a challenge. We have got the Olympics as well, there will be a challenge. We will want to grow against a backdrop of falling budgets.”

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Straw orders hunt for 1,000 fugitives

July 6th, 2009 | No Comments

Violent criminals and sex offenders among those who went on the run after breaching their prison release licences

A nationwide police hunt has been ordered by the justice secretary, Jack Straw, for nearly 1,000 offenders – including 19 murderers and 12 rapists – who have gone missing after being recalled to prison for breaching their licences.

The embarrassing admission by Straw that there at least 954 offenders “unlawfully at large” who should be in jail follows the first ever official audit of those released prisoners who have never been sent back to prison despite their licences being revoked.

The list of those who have gone missing includes 99 violent criminals, 26 sex offenders, and 72 robbers. The audit covered all offenders whose licences had been revoked between 1984 and June 2008 and involved the police and probation service checking the list for accuracy and whether some offenders had been returned to prison under a different name or had died.

The audit revealed there are 19 offenders who were recalled to prison up to 25 years ago during the period 1984 to 1999 but are still on the run. A further 142 were recalled between 1999 and 2004 but have still not been returned to prison. It is thought that more than 400 have gone missing in the last financial year alone.

The justice secretary has asked all police forces in England and Wales to take priority action to arrest and return to custody all the sexual and violent offenders on the list and to “review and renew their efforts” to apprehend the rest. Intensive reviews of the priority cases are said to be underway.

In an emergency recall the police are supposed to return an offender to jail within 74 hours and within 144 hours in standard cases. The latest figures show they meet the target in only 75% of cases.

Straw told MPs yesterday that 92,000 offenders had been recalled to prison since 1999 and only 0.7% had not been apprehended.

“The recall system works well but we are far from complacent, and recognise that the system has to be strengthened further, not least in respect of those serious offenders who remain at large,” he said. He added that regular figures would now be published as part of toughening up the regime.

But Harry Fletcher, of Napo, the probation union, said it was of real concern that nearly 1,000 offenders who had been recalled to custody had gone missing. “Many pose a threat to the public,” he said. “However, the numbers will only be reduced if chasing warrants becomes a priority for the police –which won’t happen – or additional resources are made available for the probation and police services.”

His fears were echoed by the shadow justice secretary, Dominic Grieve, who said: “The whole point of releasing prisoners on licence is that they can be monitored and returned to prison if they breach. The public will be shocked that the government has lost track of almost 1,000 criminal fugitives – including murderers, paedophiles and sex offenders.”

He said that cuts to frontline probation services would only make the situation worse.

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Judge overturns terror suspect’s ‘exile’

July 3rd, 2009 | No Comments

High court rules evidence kept secret from suspect made it impossible to fight order to leave his London home

A government decision to “exile” a terrorism suspect from London based on secret evidence must be revoked, the high court ruled today.

A judge said the decision was flawed because the father of five, identified only as BM, had not been given enough information to be able to instruct lawyers to challenge his exile.

But the judge said he would have upheld the move if the law had allowed him to rely on the secret evidence kept from BM.

BM, 36, is accused by the security services of being “a prominent member of a network of Islamist extremists”.

He was forced, through a modification to a control order already restricting his movements, to move out of the east London area to a one-bedroom flat in Leicester.

The government said the move was necessary to stop BM associating with extremist contacts “with a view to engaging in terrorist-related activity” and there was a danger of him absconding.

BM’s lawyers argued that his continuing “internal exile”, imposed in May, infringed his civil right to occupy his home.

Mr Justice Mitting ruled that the modification deprived BM “of a civil right for a significant period”.

The judge said the home secretary had attempted to justify interfering with that right by arguing there was a risk of BM absconding and his removal from London was necessary to minimise that risk.

But the government had refused to disclose its secret reasons openly, and that meant the decision to make the modification had to be treated as flawed.

The home secretary’s refusal to reveal secret reports to BM meant the court was left with “a bare assertion” that there was a risk of absconding, and that assertion had to be treated by the court as “groundless”.

But the judge said there was “closed material” – evidence heard by him in secret – that would have led to him coming to a different decision if the law had allowed him to take it into account..

The judge said: “On the basis of the closed material, I would have decided that the decision was not flawed and would have upheld the modification, notwithstanding its significant and highly adverse impact upon BM’s family, in particular upon his children.”

The judge gave the home secretary seven days to revoke the order and return BM to his home.

Government lawyers are considering whether to mount an urgent appeal.

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Johnson to unveil fast-track asbo system

July 2nd, 2009 | No Comments

Home secretary says court delays must be cut so victims of antisocial behaviour can get help quickly

Delays of up to two years in issuing an asbo are to be cut under proposals unveiled by the new home secretary, Alan Johnson, in his first major speech on crime and antisocial behaviour.

Johnson said he was looking at whether it was possible to set maximum waiting times and limits on the number of times a court case could be adjourned to speed the issuing antisocial behaviour orders.

The home secretary said he and the justice secretary, Jack Straw, wanted to help people being severely harassed or intimidated over a long time.

“We will explore what more can be done to speed this process up – in particular, how we can break down any barriers there might be between the courts and people bringing cases before them,” he said. Better training was being looked at for “practitioners”‘ so they could present cases themselves in court, he said.

The Home Office was to create local antisocial behaviour “action squads” to help criminal justice workers deal with severe problems such as underage drinking on an estate or a troublesome family.

Websites are to be set up for people to report antisocial behaviour and avoid the never-ending circle of phone calls faced by some victims.

In the speech at Battersea Arts Centre, south London, Johnson said crime figures showing a 39% fall in offences since 1997 suggested there was no reason to engage in radical restructuring or fire a scattergun of new initiatives.

“The focus must be on listening to the public and looking at what practical steps need to be taken to make the current system, with all the powers and responsibilities that this government has introduced, respond to their concerns,” he said.

He acknowledged that fear of crime was seriously debilitating if there were some streets or estates where people felt they couldn’t step out after dark to the shopbecause they were fearful of the people they might find hanging around the stairwell or outside the off-licence.

The measures on antisocial behaviour are designed to tackle the fact that much troublesome and intimidating behaviour goes unreported because people feel guilty about bothering the authorities or worry they will not be taken seriously.

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