AL-JEDDA v. THE UNITED KINGDOM

• Judgment Date: 07 July 2011
• ECLI: ECLI:CE:ECHR:2011:0707JUD002702108
• Respondent State: United Kingdom
• Application Number: 27021/08
• Date: 07 July 2011
• Court: Grand Chamber (European Court of Human Rights)
• Counsel: PUBLIC INTEREST LAWYERS
• Applied Rules: 1;5;5-1;41
• Official Gazette Publication: [object Object]

GRAND CHAMBER

CASE OF AL-JEDDA v. THE UNITED KINGDOM

(Application no. 27021/08)

JUDGMENT

STRASBOURG

7 July 2011

In the case of Al-Jedda v. the United Kingdom,

The European Court of Human Rights, sitting as a Grand Chamber composed of:

Jean-Paul Costa, President,
Christos Rozakis,
Nicolas Bratza,
Françoise Tulkens,
Josep Casadevall,
Dean Spielmann,
Giovanni Bonello,
Elisabeth Steiner,
Lech Garlicki,
Ljiljana Mijović,
Davíd Thór Björgvinsson,
Isabelle Berro-Lefèvre,
George Nicolaou,
Luis López Guerra,
Ledi Bianku,
Ann Power,
Mihai Poalelungi, judges,
and Michael O’Boyle, Deputy Registrar,

Having deliberated in private on 9 and 16 June 2010 and 15 June 2011,

Delivers the following judgment, which was adopted on the last-mentioned date:

PROCEDURE

1. The case originated in an application (no. 27021/08) against the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland lodged with the Court under Article 34 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (“the Convention”) by a joint Iraqi/British national, Mr Hilal Abdul-Razzaq Ali Al-Jedda (“the applicant”), on 3 June 2008.

2. The applicant, who had been granted legal aid, was represented by Public Interest Lawyers, solicitors based in Birmingham. The United Kingdom Government (“the Government”) were represented by their Agent, Mr D. Walton, Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

3. The applicant complained that he had been detained by British troops in Iraq in breach of Article 5 § 1 of the Convention.

4. The application was allocated to the Fourth Section of the Court (Rule 52 § 1 of the Rules of Court). On 17 February 2009 the Court decided to give notice of the application to the Government. It also decided to examine the merits of the application at the same time as its admissibility (Article 29 § 1 of the Convention). The parties took turns to file observations on the admissibility and merits of the case. On 19 January 2010 the Chamber decided to relinquish jurisdiction in favour of the Grand Chamber (Article 30 of the Convention and Rule 72).

5. The composition of the Grand Chamber was determined according to the provisions of Article 27 §§ 2 and 3 of the Convention and Rule 24. Judge Peer Lorenzen, President of the Fifth Section, withdrew and was replaced by Judge Luis López Guerra, substitute judge.

6. The applicants and the Government each filed a memorial on the admissibility and merits, and joint third-party comments were received from the non-governmental organisations Liberty and JUSTICE (“the third-party interveners”).

7. A hearing took place in public in the Human Rights Building, Strasbourg, on 9 June 2010 (Rule 59 § 3).

There appeared before the Court:

(a) for the Government
MrD. Walton, Agent,
MrJ. Eadie QC,
MsC. Ivimy,
MrS. Wordsworth, Counsel,
MsL. Dann,
MsH. Akiwumi, Advisers;

(b) for the applicant
MrRabinder Singh QC,
MrR. Husain QC,
MsS. Fatima,
MsN. Patel,
MrT. Tridimas,
MsH. Law,Counsel,
MrP. Shiner,
MrD. Carey,
MsT. Gregory,
MrJ. Duffy,Advisers.

The Court heard addresses by Mr Eadie and Mr Rabinder Singh.

THE FACTS

I. THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE CASE

8. The facts of the case may be summarised as follows.

A. The applicant, his arrest and internment

9. The applicant was born in Iraq in 1957. He played for the Iraqi basketball team until, following his refusal to join the Ba’ath Party, he left Iraq in 1978 and lived in the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan. He moved to the United Kingdom in 1992, where he made a claim for asylum and was granted indefinite leave to remain. He was granted British nationality in June 2000.

10. In September 2004 the applicant and his four eldest children travelled from London to Iraq, via Dubai. He was arrested and questioned in Dubai by United Arab Emirates intelligence officers, who released him after twelve hours, permitting him and his children to continue their journey to Iraq, where they arrived on 28 September 2004. On 10 October 2004 United States soldiers, apparently acting on information provided by the British intelligence services, arrested the applicant at his sister’s house in Baghdad. He was taken to Basra in a British military aircraft and then to the Sha’aibah Divisional Temporary Detention Facility in Basra City, a detention centre run by British forces. He was held in internment there until 30 December 2007.

11. The applicant was held on the basis that his internment was necessary for imperative reasons of security in Iraq. He was believed by the British authorities to have been personally responsible for recruiting terrorists outside Iraq with a view to the commission of atrocities there; for facilitating the travel into Iraq of an identified terrorist explosives expert; for conspiring with that explosives expert to conduct attacks with improvised explosive devices against Coalition Forces in the areas around Fallujah and Baghdad; and for conspiring with the explosives expert and members of an Islamist terrorist cell in the Gulf to smuggle high-tech detonation equipment into Iraq for use in attacks against Coalition Forces. No criminal charges were brought against him.

12. The applicant’s internment was initially authorised by the senior officer in the detention facility. Reviews were conducted seven days and twenty-eight days later by the Divisional Internment Review Committee (DIRC). This comprised the senior officer in the detention facility and army legal and military personnel. Owing to the sensitivity of the intelligence material upon which the applicant’s arrest and detention had been based, only two members of the DIRC were permitted to examine it. Their recommendations were passed to the Commander of the Coalition’s Multinational Division (South-East) (“the Commander”), who himself examined the intelligence file on the applicant and took the decision to continue the internment. Between January and July 2005 a monthly review was carried out by the Commander, on the basis of the recommendations of the DIRC. Between July 2005 and December 2007 the decision to intern the applicant was taken...