Francis FitzGibbon

Low-Hanging Fruit: An American Show Trial

Francis FitzGibbon, 22 January 2015

Zakat, the Quranic obligation on Muslims to give alms for the relief of poverty, is one of the five pillars of Islam. The Holy Land Foundation, founded in 1988 by American citizens of Palestinian heritage, raised money for distribution by zakat charitable committees in Gaza and the West Bank. Most of it went to buy food, clothes and education for children. Between 1992 and 2001 the foundation raised at least $56 million. On 3 December 2001 the US Treasury Department decreed that the HLF was a ‘specially designated global terrorist’.

Letter

The state washes its hands

6 November 2014

A footnote to Frederick Wilmot-Smith’s excellent artice about legal aid (LRB, 6 November). It was Kenneth Clarke, as lord chancellor in 2012, who summed up the ideological basis for destroying legal aid when he told the International Bar Association: ‘What we mustn’t do is just leave untouched a system that has grown astonishingly, making the poor extremely litigious.’ Grayling inherited his...

Short Cuts: Human Rights à la Carte

Francis FitzGibbon, 23 October 2014

Things aren’t going well for Chris Grayling, the secretary of state for justice. His ‘Spartan’ prisons policy and sacking of hundreds of warders coincided with a rise in violent disorder and suicides in jails. In September a High Court judge described his actions on legal aid as so unfair as to be illegal (he was found to have suppressed expert reports that showed his...

From The Blog

Needle, Haystack, Magnet

21 July 2014

In 1765 Lord Camden, the chief justice of England, held that the King’s Messengers – the Special Branch of the day – had to pay damages for trespassing on the premises of a newspaper publisher. They were looking for copies of his newspaper, which the government regarded as seditious – or as we might say now, a threat to national security. They were acting on the orders of a government minister, but his orders didn't have the force of law and couldn't trump the publisher’s property rights – in effect, his right to privacy. ‘By the laws of England,' Lord Camden said, ‘every invasion of private property, be it ever so minute, is a trespass.’ The case, Entick v. Carrington, established that ministers must not issue general warrants and their agents must not enter private property without a lawful warrant. The Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act (DRIP) became law last week after just three days of parliamentary debate. When David Cameron said of the bill, ‘I want to be very clear: we are not introducing new powers or capabilities,’ he was clear, but he wasn’t accurate.

Short Cuts: The Lobbying Bill

Francis FitzGibbon, 19 December 2013

The Lobbying Bill – due to complete the Lords committee stage before Christmas – is intended ‘to ensure that people know whose interests are being represented by consultant lobbyists who make representations to government’. Part One provides that lobbyists must disclose the names of their clients four times a year in a public register; there will be a registrar to...

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