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The inaugural European Games in Baku is round the corner and the spotlight has been focusing on Azerbaijan’s poor human rights record, with a number of high profile human rights defenders still detained within the prison system. Ramute Remezaite, one of the legal representatives of detained lawyers Intigam Aliyev and Rasul Jafarov, has written this guest post on their case and the situation in Azerbaijan.

Rasul Jafarov after a court hearing at the Baku Grave Crimes Court.

Azerbaijan is experiencing perhaps the worst human rights crackdown since its independence. With the escalation in summer 2014, the unprecedented repression on civil society has resulted in key human rights defenders, journalists and activists behind bars under bogus charges, de facto closure of dozens of critical human rights NGOs, and a series of overly restrictive amendments to NGO laws in the last couple of years. With the shrinking space for independent groups, the very existence of Azerbaijani civil society is at great risk.

For Intigam Aliyev and Rasul Jafarov, two prominent lawyers, human rights defenders and NGO leaders, the repression has now been moved to a courtroom. In April 2015, Aliyev and Jafarov were sentenced to 7½ and 6½ years respectively in prison under the charges of illegal entrepreneurship, tax evasion, abuse of power, misappropriation and forgery.

Intigam Aliyev is an experienced human rights lawyer and President of the Legal Education Society, who successfully litigated cases against Azerbaijan in the European Court of Human Rights for many years.

Rasul Jafarov is a prominent human rights defender and Chairman of the Human Rights Club, well known for his wide reaching human rights campaigns ‘Sing for Democracy’ and ‘Art for Democracy’, and for compiling a comprehensive list of political prisoners in Azerbaijan.

Both activists are also well known for their active engagement with the Council of Europe, OSCE and the UN human rights bodies advocating for the improvement of the human rights situation in Azerbaijan.

Despite the wide attendance of representatives of foreign embassies in Baku, domestic and international observers, civil society members and the media during their court hearings, neither faced a fair trial.

During the first two hearings, both Aliyev and Jafarov were handcuffed in a cage, which not only prevented them from communicating with their lawyers during the trial, but also violated the presumption of innocence, imposing that both activists be treated as criminals. The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has also recognised this as amounting to degrading treatment of detainees.

The proceedings resulted in gross violations of the principle of equality of arms. The Nasimi District Court only examined the evidence provided by the prosecution, dismissing all argumentation and evidence provided by the defendants. In both cases, the court dismissed requests by the defence to invite additional witnesses, who held relevant information as evidence for the examination of the cases.

In the case of Rasul Jafarov, all five alleged victims involved in the case insisted they did not have any claims against the activist and requested the domestic court to lift their status as victims. The Nasimi District Court ignored such requests and used it as evidence against Jafarov, claiming that the signatures on payment slips to alleged victims were forged. It further dismissed the results of independent forensic expertise conducted abroad concluding the authenticity of signatures of two alleged victims.

In both cases, clear violations of the burden of proof, an important component of presumption of innocence, were found. For example, the court claimed that Jafarov was guilty with misappropriation of funds as he allegedly failed to provide evidence documenting the spending of funds. In Aliyev’s case, the prosecution claimed that he failed to acquire registration for foreign grants received before such a requirement entered into force.

Both activists appealed to the Baku Appeal Court but do not expect any justice brought in domestic courts, and plan to appeal to the ECtHR. Their cases challenging the legality of the pre-trial detention have already been communicated to the government of Azerbaijan by the ECtHR under priority rule.

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This is a guest post written by Ramute Remezaite and may not reflect the views of Fair Trials.

Ramute Remezaite is a human rights lawyer, PhD Candidate at the School of Law of Middlesex University and one of the legal representatives of Rasul Jafarov and Intigam Aliyev before the ECtHR.

Image credit Ferqane Novruzova.

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The post Guest Post: Human rights defenders in Azerbaijan unable to receive a fair trial appeared first on FairTrials.org.

It’s been a long road since I shared something vaguely similar to this recipe, well over six years ago. At the time, I said that I had a goal to make more crockpot recipes. Since then, I have made exactly three crockpot recipes worth sharing, and one of those I’ve never made again. In general, I’m more into low-and-slow oven cooking than crockpotting. Heck, I recently even made “crockpot” pulled “pork” (it was venison; still delicious) in the oven.

The long road of not-crockpotting has led me to adapt my old favorite crockpot recipe for the stove. The way the original recipe is written, with bone-in chicken thighs, the crockpot is a good choice. However, I always make this as an easy, healthy, vegetarian weeknight meal, leaving the chicken out. Why spend 10 hours, the whole day when I’m away for work, slow-cooking canned beans with some seasonings?

So instead of adapting stovetop or oven recipes for the crockpot like most people do, I’ve adapted a crockpot recipe for the stove. I replaced the chicken soup mix with aromatics and spices, the chicken with a greater variety of beans, and the fresh tomatoes with canned tomatoes (in season year round!). It really isn’t any harder than the crockpot recipe was, and it tastes just as good.  With this new crockpot-less recipe, it might be time to retire my crockpot entirely.  Surely I can think of another fun new kitchen tool that I don’t really need to take up that cabinet space, right?

Printer Friendly Recipe
Spicy Mexican Beans and Rice

8 servings

2 tablespoons vegetable or olive oil
1 large or 2 small to medium onions, diced
salt
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 teaspoons chili powder
1 teaspoon cumin
½ teaspoon oregano
½ cup green chile, roasted, peeled, and diced
2 chipotle chiles, minced
2 (15-ounce) cans black beans, drained and rinsed
1 (15-ounce) can kidney beans, drained and rinsed
1 (15-ounce) can pinto beans, drained and rinsed
1 (14-ounce) diced tomatoes
1 cup chicken broth
juice from 1 lime
6 cups cooked rice from 2 cups uncooked rice
cilantro, minced
optional toppings: queso fresco or cheddar cheese, diced avocado, Greek yogurt or sour cream

Heat the oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add the onion and a pinch of salt and cook, stirring occasionally, until just beginning to brown at the edges, about 8 minutes. Add the garlic, chili powder, cumin, and oregano; cook, stirring constantly, until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add the green chile, chipotle chiles, beans, tomatoes, and broth; cover, bring to a simmer, then reduce the heat to low and lightly simmer until the flavors are blended, at least 20 minutes or up to an hour if you aren’t in a hurry. If the mixture is too liquidy, remove the cover, increase the heat to medium, and simmer until the desired thickness is reached. Taste and add salt if necessary. Stir in the lime juice. Serve over rice, topped with cilantro and other toppings as desired.

We all have our favorite bites.  My favorite bite of a brownie is the slightly burnt corner edge.  My favorite sips of coffee are the first and the last.  My favorite part of the pepperoni pizza roll is the soft gooey center.  If you leave me alone with a tray of these Pepperoni Pizza Rolls, be prepared to come back to just the outsides because my favorite bite is the gooey center of every.single.roll.

I stand by the fact that the best part of baking is sharing what you create with people who you love.  Baking is totally a love language.  If you can share your favorite bites?… now that’s something special.  If you were to ask me to share the gooey center pizza roll bite, it would probably take me a good while before I said yes.  That’s just real.

 

Remember last Fall?  Last Fall I shared my partnership with Fleischmann’s® Yeast, Fleischmann’s® Simply Homemade® Baking Mixes, and Karo® Syrup as a part of their Baking a Difference Program to benefit Share Our Strength’s No Kid Hungry program.  I love this charity because they focus on ending childhood hunger in America.  If I can help that cause with a bit of baking, I’m all in!  One in five children in the U.S. struggle with hunger and cannot rely on having access to the daily nutritious food they need to grow and thrive, and the No Kid Hungry campaign works to end that hunger.  Big deal, right?

Last fall we made Salty Pretzel Vanilla Caramel Corn with much success, and now we get to talk about a really cool free e-cookbook and Pepperoni Pizza Rolls!

Pizza Rolls for charity?  Yea… that’s totally a thing.

Baking for a cause!

The Baking a Difference Cookbook to benefit Share Our Strength’s No Kid Hungry is here!

Inside this free e-cookbook is a host of homey comfort foods and classic recipes with a delicious twist.  I have a handful recipes in the book, too!  These Pizza Rolls are just a peek at all the goodness inside this e-cookbook!

Download the free e-cookbook here!

And!

It’s not too late to share the love (and the cheesy Pizza Roll centers)!

Join thousands of bakers across the country by hosting a Bake Sale for No Kid Hungry™ from May 2-4. Help blanket the country in bake sales and end childhood hunger in America. Every $1 raised can help connect a child with up to 10 meals.  I’m already plotting my future bake sale! Sign up here: Bake.NoKidHungry.org

Let’s talk about these Pizza Rolls!  Think of them as Cinnamon Rolls without the cinnamon and sugar.  Think of them as the gooiest slice of pizza rolled up into a delicious spiral.  It’s the ultimate savory comfort food!  So good!

Making these pizza rolls is much easier than you think!  If you’re intimidated by yeast, these rolls would be a great place to start.  There is only a 30 minute rising time, a rolling out of the dough and a rolling up of the dough.  It’s actually easy to pull warm, gooey, bready, pizza out of the oven!

I like to bake these pizza rolls off, and enjoy a few warm from the oven with a green salad.  The rest of the rolls can be frozen and heated up individually for afternoon snacking.  It’s a good situation top any which way you slice it!

Pepperoni Pizza Rolls

makes 8 rolls

For the Crust:

1-3/4 to 2-1/4 cups all-purpose flour

1 envelope Fleischmann’s® Pizza Crust Yeast OR Rapid Rise Yeast (2 1/4 teaspoons)

1-1/2 teaspoons sugar

3/4 teaspoon salt

2/3 cup very warm water (120° to 130°F)*

3 tablespoons olive oil

For the Filling:

¾ to 1 cup pizza sauce, plus more for topping

16-20 pepperoni slices

1 ½ cup shredded mozzarella cheese

coarse sea salt and crushed red pepper flakes

Place a rack in the upper third of the oven and preheat oven to 425°F. Grease and flour eight cups of a standard cupcake tin and set aside.

Combine 1 cup flour, undissolved yeast, sugar and salt in a large bowl. Whisk together the warm water and the oil and add to the dry ingredients. Mix until well blended, about 1 minute. Gradually add enough remaining flour to make a soft dough. Dough should form a ball and will be slightly sticky. Knead on a floured surface, adding additional flour if necessary, until smooth and elastic, about 4 minutes.

Place dough in a large, lightly greased bowl, and cover with plastic wrap.  Allow to rest for 30 minutes in a warm, draft-free place.  Dough should almost double in size.

Remove the dough from the bowl and place on a lightly floured work surface.  Use a rolling pin to roll the dough into a ½-inch thick rectangle, about 12-inches long and 9-inches tall.

Spread with pizza sauce over the dough, leaving a ½-inch boarder around the edges. Sprinkle with cheese and top with pepperoni.

Starting with the left side, tightly roll the dough from left to right, making sure the seal is on the underside on the roll.  Slice into 8 even slices and carefully transfer to prepared pan.

Bake for 14 to 16 minutes or until dough has risen, cheese is bubbling, and rolls are golden brown.

Remove from the oven and allow to cool for 10 minutes before removing from the pan.  Serve warm with extra pizza sauce, and a sprinkling of sea salt and crushed red pepper flakes.

A new video shows the devastating impact of unjust extradition and the urgent need to reform the European Arrest Warrant.

The video – produced by Fair Trials International – features a number of our clients discussing how their lives were turned upside down by extradition. They are Andrew Symeou (who spent 1 year in a high security prison in Greece while awaiting trial), Natalia Gorczowska (who faced separation from her infant son if extradited to Poland) and Garry Mann (extradited to Portugal to spend 2 years in prison based on a grossly unfair conviction).

Fair Trials has campaigned for many years for vital safeguards to be incorporated into the EAW – safeguards which would ensure people are not wrenched from their homes and families, only to be imprisoned on the basis of a minor crime or mistaken identity. The video show the public reaction across the EU, and helps to illustrate how our cases have convinced policy-makers in Brussels and beyond that the EAW needs urgent reform.

At the heart of all this work has been our clients. By sharing their stories, our clients are able to show the need for human rights safeguards in a way in which policy-makers cannot ignore. We are very grateful to those clients who have participated in our campaign – including speaking in the European Parliament, meeting with domestic policy-makers and sharing their experiences in the print and broadcast media.

Since Fair Trials began campaigning for reform of the EAW in 2009, we have seen major progress with this work. In July 2013, the UK Government promised an overhaul of the EAW to prevent future cases like Andrew Symeou’s. The Vice-President of the European Commission (Viviane Reding) has said – in a letter to Fair Trials – that there is “significant room for improvement” in the operation of the EAW, and the European Parliament has also launched a major review of the legislation governing the EAW.

Fair Trials has consistently recognised the need for countries across Europe to work together to tackle crime, but this cannot, however, be at the expense of the fundamental rights of people like Andrew or Natalia. This video provides a compelling reminder of why this is so important.

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Watch more Fair Trials International videos – including interviews with our beneficiaries around the world –  at our YouTube channel – www.youtube.com/fairtrialsint

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The post New video shows impact of extradition appeared first on Fair Trials.

LSE is beginning a project in collaboration with Democratic Audit  to draft a new constitution for the UK by “crowdsourcing”, and last night’s launch event was fascinating and fun, as you’d expect with Professor Conor Gearty leading the discussion. David Blunkett MP called Gearty “LSE’s Bob Monkhouse”, an affectionately rude way of acknowledging Gearty’s wit and way with an audience. He’s a great communicator on law so if you can hear him speak, you should.

He began by asking what values were missing from the British constitution now – collective rights and something called universalism were suggestions from the audience – and suggested that long-termism might be the biggest gap, with our current political system focused on the short term. The evening was a mix of discussion of that sort (what John Strafford, who was in the audience, called “academic froth”), short contributions from the panel and interactive voting on issues like Does everyone deserve to be treated equally? Initially, 70% of the audience agreed they did, but after a short discussion – Carol Harlow saying it depended whether we meant equal treatment in terms of money, or procedures, or in court, and David Blunkett suggesting people should not gain access on equal terms with others to entitlements they hadn’t earned equally – that share went down to only 46%. Writing a constitution would be “damned hard”, David Blunkett commented.

Blunkett was the first panelist to present an argument, in his case that the right to state protection was fundamental. This is an interesting idea, familiar in one form but I think perfectly reasonably cast in terms of rights. The state, on this approach, cannot simply focus on the rights of, say, Abu Qatada, but must balance them against the rights of those who need protection from him. Blunkett made clear he’s well aware of his red-toothed reputation as Home Secretary, and emphasised repeatedly the need for constitutional protection to come through the democratic process rather then by courts, but he had some kind words for lawyers:

People like me have got so aggravated with lawyers, we’ve forgotten they are actually essential.

Two thirds of the audience agreed that the state should guarantee a minimum standard of living, and that vote remained solid in spite of powerful points made by Carol Harlow, who said she thought such social guarantees should be a matter of law and policy, and that the state

should just be getting on with that, not worrying about whether it’s in the constitution

and by Dr Lea Ypi, who said questions of distributive justice like this cannot be considered apart from the property system in a society.

Carol Harlow made the case against a written constitution in principle. Constitutions tend to be deliberately antidemocratic, she said: they’re

for the people but not by the people

her prime example being the ill-fated “European Constitution”. This is not a “constitutional moment” for us, she said, in which we needed to mark a fresh start. Our current institutions are stable and well embedded, and their flexibility is an advantage right now since we don’t know where the next few years will take us, with one referendum certain to take place in Scotland and another, about the EU, possible in a few years. The wrong things tend to get into constitutions, she argued – like the right to bear arms – and the right things get left out, so that for instance the courts in American ended up being a barrier to abolishing slavery and to women’s rights. Finally, she said written constitutions shift power unacceptably towards judges. while she admires the German Constitutional Court, she would not want the UK to have a constitutional court of that sort.

Richard Gordon QC argued for a written constitution, saying he’d written his draft, in his book Repairing British Politics, in “white heat” following the 2009 MPs’ expenses crisis, which had got him interested in politics for really the first time. He compared Parliamentary sovereignty, the keystone of the unwritten constitution we have, to papal infallibility, calling it

a giant confidence trick.

He said he agreed with much of what Carol Harlow had said except that whether the right or wrong things get into a constitution simply depends on how you draft it. Parliamentary sovereignty he said had

no respectable historical basis, and no respectable democratic basis

and it is, he said

a myth and an evil.

We have to get rid of it, he said, and the only way to do so is by means of a written constitution.

Lea Ypi said one of the critical questions is how a constitution that’s democratic at its origin can remain democratic by building in opportunities for political agency and for deliberative as well as representative governance. The points she made about process implied she felt the process of discussing a possible constitution was as important as any outcome.

Politics is always about elites and power

she said. It’s up to the people to use the processes open to them to effect change.

I was encouraged that others in the audience apart from me were resistant to a written constitution as a panacea for Britain: Tony Holland reminded us you can get rid of Parliament but not so easily of a constitutional court. But Richard Gordon fired back at naysayers, asking:

Who on earth voted for Parliamentary sovereignty?

Surprisingly enough the vote on a written constitution was a dead heat: 41% for, 41% against.

I’m firmly against a written constitution for Britain, but I think this is a brilliant project that’ll be interesting not just in terms of its product but because of what happens along the way. I encourage you to get involved.

Mousa and others, R (on the application of) v Secretary of State for Defence [2013] EWHC 2941 (Admin) - read judgment

A postscript to Rosalind English’s post of today. In the substantive judgment (see Adam Wagner’s post on the order), the Divisional Court decided two main issues, one relating to the independence of the Iraq Historic Allegations Team, and one relating to the extent to which an inquiry conducted through IHAT complied with Article 2 of the ECHR. The Secretary of State succeeded on the first issue, whereas the claimant succeeded substantially on the second issue relating to the need for a different form of inquiry. Hence there was no overall winner; the Secretary of State won on the first issue and the claimant succeeded substantially on the second issue. But more time was spent on the first issue. 

What then to do about costs? And why is that interesting – promise you, it is important.

If both parties had been paying for their representation, then there would be two straightforward ways of doing things. Either the Court would order the SoS to recover the costs of issue 1 and the Claimants the costs of issue 2, or the Court would do a rough and ready apportionment at the end of which it would order, say, the Claimants to pay 20% of the costs as a whole if 1 was much bigger than 2.

But the Claimants were legally aided. So they would be entitled to costs if they won on an open-market rate from the other side, but would only be entitled to artificially reduced rates from the legal aid authorities if they lost – not in reality enough to pay the bills.

They therefore said that the only just outcome would be that each side was entitled to the costs on the issue upon which it had won, but that the SoS should not be entitled to set off his costs (likely to be larger) against the sums to which the Claimants were entitled. From the point of view of the Claimants’ advisers, this was perfectly fair; they would get the reduced rates on the bit they lost, and a proper commercial rate on the bit they won. But from the SoS’s point of view, this gave him nothing, because he would never be able to enforce his bit of the order without a set-off.

The Court disagreed with the Claimants’ argument. The Claimants had relied on various statements in the cases including Lord Hope in the JFS case:

25.     It is one thing for solicitors who do a substantial amount of publicly funded work, and who have to fund the substantial overheads that sustaining a legal practice involves, to take the risk of being paid at lower rates if a publicly funded case turns out to be unsuccessful. It is quite another for them to be unable to recover remuneration at inter partes rates in the event that their case is successful. If that were to become the practice, their businesses would very soon become financially unsustainable. The system of public funding would be gravely disadvantaged in its turn, as it depends upon there being a pool of reputable solicitors who are willing to undertake this work. …… It is, of course, true that legally aided litigants should not be treated differently from those who are not. But the consequences for solicitors who do publicly funded work is a factor which must be taken into account. A court should be very slow to impose an order that each side must be liable for its own costs in a high costs case where either or both sides are publicly funded. Had such an order been asked for in this case we would have refused to make it.

But the problem came with s.22(4) of the Access to Justice Act 1999 which provides that the fact of legal aid shall not affect—

(a) the rights or liabilities of other parties to the proceedings, or

(b) the principles on which the discretion of any court or tribunal is normally exercised.

So, the Court said, it could not make the order sought by the Claimants. The upshot will be, I suspect, that the Claimants’ advisers lose much, if not all, of the extra costs which their success on issue 2 would otherwise have conferred.

Comment

This is an interesting and important problem. Legal aid lawyers in these big cases run cases for rates which are in overall terms loss-making, were it not for the benefits of winning some of the cases and getting the proper commercial rates which this brings. The overall deal is a reasonable trade-off to ensure that lawyers back (most of the time) winners. But the partial win in this case and its possible financial outcome would tend to invalidate that deal.

There is no easy answer. Legislative intervention is astonishingly unlikely; the Government is hardly a friend of judicial review at the best of times, let alone legal aid. Some discipline is needed to ensure that legally aided parties do not approach litigation with a scatter gun (not that I suggest that here for a moment, as all the points in play were strongly arguable).

Perhaps Claimants ought to start writing the sorts of letters which are commonplace in private law litigation. In the present context (and with the benefit of 20:20 hindsight about the result, and not knowing whether this would have been enough for their clients), one which might have said – “all we really want to do is to win on issue 2. If you give us that, we will not press issue 1. But if you do not give us issue 2, then we will press issue 1, and because it is strongly arguable we will invite the court to give us the costs of the whole  hearing because that is the only reason it was necessary to get to court.” It may seem a bit scheming in the context of public interest litigation, but, if it enables the survival of public interest lawyers in otherwise wintry times, so what?

Cards on the table: I was for the Legal Services Commission in the JFS case, and in an initial hearing for the LSC in Mousa.

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More on this topic:

• High Court directs major overhaul of Iraq death and mistreatment allegations investigation
• Investigation team “lacks necessary independence” for MOD ill-treatment allegations
• Baha Mousa Public Inquiry finds “Corporate failure by MoD”
• European Convention on Human Rights applied in Basrah, UK failed duties to Iraqi civilians

Filed under: In the news Tagged: costs, legal aid, set-off

Charlie Rowe as Ronnie Winslow | Photo: Nobby Clark

Terence Rattigan’s famous play, about a father’s fight for justice for his son, was first staged in London in 1946; and Lindsay Posner’s production at the Old Vic makes you feel you’ve seen it as it might have been presented then. It has a consciously old-fashioned aesthetic, with strong performances in, I thought, a studiedly stilted style. Ian Shuttleworth in the FT called it arid. I thought it more interesting.

The thirteen year old Ronnie Winslow is “sacked” from his naval college for stealing a £5 postal order. But the boy’s been treated unfairly, his stern father thinks. So Arthur Winslow takes on the might of the Admiralty, backed by his suffragette daughter Kate and his barrister, Sir Robert Morton KC.

Henry Goodman is, as you might expect, strong as Arthur Winslow – his performance is the most naturalistic by contemporary standards (or “organic”, to use Ian Shuttleworth’s word), showing the doubt and emotionalism of the man beneath the social and paternal surface. The part runs out of steam slightly towards the end, though, as Arthur’s energy wanes.

I was most interested by the lawyers, of course. Jay Villiers is outstanding as the solicitor Desmond Curry, giving a movingly tragicomic portrait of a man whose achievements are overshadowed by one great disappointment. He, like Winslow, carries his emotional grief as a wound. But the famous role is that of Sir Robert Morton, a strange, forbidding silk, and Tory politician. Peter Sullivan is positively repellent in the role, flooding the stage with a harsh, cold torchlight. I mean this as a compliment to a fine performance.

The play’s most famous scene is Morton’s cross-examination of “the Boy”, and Sullivan’s is more brutal than the cinematic ones I’ve seen, by Robert Donat, in 1948, and Jeremy Northam in 1999 – its closing line bringing the curtain down most dramatically for the interval. We’re told of, not shown, the hint of humanity under Morton’s cold exterior (except, perhaps, in the subtle respect and admiration Morton shows for Winslow père as the two men bond over whisky and soda). But this is a strength. In this production, Kate Winslow’s reaction to the “fish-like” Morton fully makes sense. His professional conduct threat against Curry is especially nasty.

The play’s terrifically Tory in sentiment. Winslow’s no radical. What moves him is a feeling of injustice by the state, the “new despotism” of Whitehall bureaucracy that A.V. Dicey had written about early in the twentieth century, and what seems to Winslow a breach of Magna Carta. It’s an attitude often seen today among “civil liberties” Tories, many of whom would support, red-faced, Winslow’s petition of right – but who’d loathe its modern counterpart, judicial review. It’s interesting that only Kate sees the cause in terms of human rights.

While its social and moral interest in men is deep, women aren’t for the most part taken seriously in this play. The silly woman journalist is especially hard to find funny in 2013. To be fair to Rattigan, Grace Winslow (Deborah Findlay) is given important lines about pride – lines that go to the emotional heart of the play, and which ask serious questions of anyone who’s ever claimed to fight in the name of “justice”. What’s more, Kate Winslow is portrayed both seriously and sympathetically – and Naomi Frederick fills the role well.

In a way, we today see the whole action from Kate’s point of view, and this perhaps shows Rattigan’s sympathies as wider than first appear. The final scene is built on the dramatic irony that we know Kate’s cause will triumph over Morton. More impressively, while he clearly admires the unbendingly repressed and righteous Morton, Rattigan seems through Kate to see what “freedom Toryism” looks like to social democrats: magnifique and magnanimous yet Quixotic and contradictory, selective and sentimental.

For anyone interested in law and the English, The Winslow Boy is an essential play. Its contemporary relevance is brought out all the more strongly by this deliberately “retro” production.

Over 50% of defendants in Warsaw are unrepresented at early pre-trial detention hearings according to Fair Trials International and leading Polish criminal justice experts. The failure to provide adequate representation and the inability of the Polish Courts to thoroughly review pre-trial motions is resulting in the unnecessary detention of many individuals.

Fair Trials International convened a working group to discuss problems with pre-trial detention in Poland. The working group, comprised of Polish experts in the criminal justice field, was challenged by Fair Trials to identify issues around the standards of decision making in pre-trial detention cases in Poland, reasons for lengthy periods of pre-trial detention and the lack of use of alternatives to detention. Using their experience, participants also identified legal opportunities for reform. Excessive use of pre-trial detention can have a devastating effect on defendants, who may lose their job and be restricted from seeing family or friends despite not having been convicted of any crime. It is also very expensive. The Local Expert Group worked with Fair Trials to produce a communiqué which outlines major problems and identifies suggested reforms.

While Polish laws comply with international standards in relation to pre-trial detention, in practice detention is the general rule rather than the exception and alternatives are rarely used by the courts. The FTI Local Expert Group identified the following reasons for this;

• Courts fail to consider or make use of available alternatives to pre-trial detention.
• Judges are often unaware of EU standards and laws due to inadequate training.
• Judges tend to adopt the recommendation of the prosecutor on issues of detention and do not consider the defendant’s submissions in sufficient detail.
• Courts are overwhelmed with applications and do not have time to properly review motions on pre-trial detention.
• Defendants are not given access to the evidence against them nor are they adequately represented by lawyers.

Fair Trials was encouraged to hear about ongoing legal reforms in Poland which, if implemented, will have a positive impact on pre-trial proceedings and detention. Concerns remain however about the gap between law and practice. Key recommendations of the Local Experts Group include; additional training for judges and prosecutors to increase awareness of best practices for the use of alternatives to pre-trial detention, a requirement that lawyers attend the pre-trial hearings of all their clients, and a need for Courts to require better reasons for the extension of pre-trial detention with a presumption of release if no new reasons for continuing detention are put forward.

Fair Trials will now work with NGOs, legal professionals and academics to engage the Polish government in the reform process and to implement training programmes and other recommendations.

Download the communiqué here

The post Communiqué Following Meeting in Poland to Discuss Pre-Trial Detention appeared first on Fair Trials.

Sharia councils may be out of touch with gender roles in the UK on issues such as divorce, but let's hear how they are changing

The recent BBC Panorama investigation on sharia councils raised important questions about fairness and openness in Britain's sharia councils, but was intended more as an exposé than a balanced account. Such is their prerogative, but quite a different picture emerges from the several academic studies of the councils and their clients: imperfect institutions responding to a demand for a religious (not a legal) service.

Firstly, let's recognise that we have so many media accounts of sharia councils because they have opened their doors widely to the press. In sessions I attend in the largest council – based in Leyton and featured in the Panorama programme – and in the Birmingham central mosque council, I sit alongside film crews and journalists from UK, US, and French media. Let's consider the charges often made against them.

Are they "parallel legal systems"? They provide a religious divorce that has no civil-law effect, as do councils serving other UK religious communities, of which the Beth Din is the best known. Indeed, the two councils I study require that couples who have a civil marriage begin civil divorce proceedings before they take up the case. They do not rule on child residence or assets, knowing full well that only courts can issue enforceable orders. But do UK courts ever "rubber-stamp" a sharia council opinion on children or assets, as if often claimed by the media? I have looked for such cases, asking family law barristers and judges, and have come up dry: judges will look out for the best interests of the child and a fair division of assets in all cases that come to their courts.

Do the councils discriminate against women? Well, the major monotheisms do discriminate against women, each in its own way. Muslim men and women have unequal divorce powers: a man can divorce his wife without her consent, whereas a woman needs to either persuade him to do so or to ask a judge or, in lands without Islamic judges, a sharia council, to end the marriage. That is why the councils exist (in India, the US and elsewhere, as well as in the UK) and why women are their major clients. We might deplore this inequality in Islam, and also deplore inequality in orthodox Judaism – where women are more dependent on men to release them from marriage than are their Muslim sisters – and in the different strains of Christianity. But the sharia councils did not create this particular divorce inequality; they are a response to it.

Do they charge women higher fees than men? Yes, generally twice as much, because for men they simply issue a certificate, whereas granting a woman a divorce is a more lengthy procedure, involving multiple letters to notify the husband and the chance for him to present his case, regardless of his country of residence. Is it too long? Sometimes: I found that for the busiest and therefore slowest council (Leyton), about 45% of cases were decided in six to eight months, 45% in 10-19 months, and 10% took much longer, either because the petitioner asked the council to wait, or because the council simply failed to act in an efficient manner. They could do better, but so could the courts.

Do they encourage violence toward women? No: as the Leyton council member said, even in the highly edited Panorama report, "this is not allowed". Councils do urge couples to reconcile (although they rarely do) and to attend joint meetings, but most often these meetings do not occur, and phone interviews are conducted with the absent party.

Do some councils seem out of touch with gender roles in the UK? I think so. Learned in religious matters, some councillors are less so in navigating the British social world. As a new generation, including more women, takes on these roles, the tone of council sessions will change as well. Indeed, it is already happening in some newer councils. Balanced media criticism, based on objectively gathered evidence, could remind them how important these changes will be.

• Sharia law
• Religion
• Islam
• Divorce
• Marriage
• Human rights

John R Bowen
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