Creating Terror Fears

Britain has been implicated in America's ploy to build terror fears to go to war:

Lord Steyn hailed the Belmarsh ruling as "a great day for the law", and "a vindication of the rule of law, ranking with historic judgments of our courts".

He added: "Nobody doubts in any way the very real risk of international terrorism. But the Belmarsh decision came against the public fear whipped up by the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom since September 11 2001 and their determination to bend established international law to their will and to undermine its essential structures."

As far as he could ascertain, he said, the Belmarsh case was the first in which a government had sought, and managed, to change the composition of the panel of law lords due to hear a particular case.

The government, repre sented by the attorney general, argued that Lord Steyn should not sit on the case because, in a 2002 lecture, he had said: "In my view the suspension of article 5 of the European convention on human rights - which prevents arbitrary detention - so that people can be locked up without trial when there is no evidence on which they could be prosecuted is not in present circumstances justified."