March, 06 2014, 08:34am EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Donald Campbell in Reprieve’s press office: +44 (0) 207 553 8166 / donald.campbell@reprieve.org.uk
UK Government Has Poor Record on Keeping Spy Inquiry Promises
Responding to the Home Secretary's announcement of a judge-led inquiry into undercover policing, following revelations that Scotland Yard spied on the family of Stephen Lawrence, Reprieve's Executive Director, Clare Algar said:
LONDON
Responding to the Home Secretary's announcement of a judge-led inquiry into undercover policing, following revelations that Scotland Yard spied on the family of Stephen Lawrence, Reprieve's Executive Director, Clare Algar said:
"This shocking case further demonstrates that the covert activities of Government agencies are out of control. It is crucial that any inquiry gets to the bottom of this, but sadly this Government does not have a good record when it comes to following through on such pledges. Just last year, David Cameron broke his promise to hold an independent, judge-led inquiry into UK involvement in torture.
"Government lawyers have worked to push cases involving undercover police officers or the security services into secret courts such as the Investigatory Powers Tribunal - where the citizen has little chance of success against the state. There have been some encouraging noises this week from politicians about reforming oversight, but we are still a long way away from anything approaching real accountability for the secretive parts of the state."
Reprieve is a UK-based human rights organization that uses the law to enforce the human rights of prisoners, from death row to Guantanamo Bay.
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U.S. President Joe Biden on Thursday announced that he is commuting the sentences of nearly 1,500 Americans and pardoning 39 people convicted of nonviolent crimes, a move the White House described as "the largest single-day grant of clemency in modern history."
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According to a White House fact sheet, those who received commutations "have been serving their sentences at home for at least one year under the Covid-era CARES Act," a law that extended the amount of time in which people could be placed in home confinement to reduce the spread of the virus in prisons.
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The Biden Justice Department paused federal executions in 2021, but President-elect Donald Trump pledged on the campaign trail to expand the use of the death penalty and is expected to allow the executions of the 40 men on death row to take place if they're still there when he takes office next month.
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