Tag Archives: Judiciary and human rights

Northern Ireland chief justice to confront critics on bail decisions

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15th March 2013

The Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland Sir Declan Morgan has given a rare TV interview designed to take the heat out of allegations of partiality between unionists and nationalists in granting bail. He is offering to explain the basis of recent decisions to the Justice Committee of the Northern Ireland Assembly and is making himself available to his most prominent critic, the Democratic Unionist First Minister of the powersharing Executive Peter Robinson. The meeting was in fact pre-arranged but will now take on a more urgent character. His private secretary had earlier sent a letter to the Assembly   explaining that in bail decisions  judges carefully weigh the risks – such as a risk of flight, likelihood of committing further offences, interfering with witnesses and preservation of public order – against the rights of the untried accused.

“It is essential that they are free to do this independently and without being subject to external influence.”

Now the chief justice has widened his response to add the offer of an appearance before Assembly members and a meeting with the First Minister if he still wants one. As a direct response to a running controversy this move is unprecedented and as I’ll argue shortly, carries risks which Morgan himself will be aware of.

Even post- Troubles Northern Ireland politics is still largely a zero sum game. In this case unionists are up in arms at bail being denied to two ring leaders of sporadic protests at the decision of Belfast City Council to reduce the number of days for flying the Union Jack above the City Hall. One of them Willie Frazer attracts both sympathy and hostility. Four family members including his father, all of them members of the security forces, were killed by the IRA over 10 years. He is head of a movement called FAIR,  Families Acting for Innocent (unionist) families  which campaigns for justice for victims of the Troubles  but specialises in provocative demonstrations and comments.   He was refused bail on March 1. At another hearing when bail was refused to another alleged loyalist agitator Jamie Bryson, the judge hit out against “ill informed debate” about bail decisions. This attracted the comment of “ judicial arrogance “ from a DUP minister.

Meanwhile, switching sides,  two prominent republicans in south Armagh  were  granted bail in connection with demonstrations eight years ago in favour of the ( not quite disbanded ) IRA which had been held responsible  for the notorious  murder of a Belfast man Robert McCartney in 2005. Despite a McCartney family campaign which reached Downing St and the Oval Office, IRA omerta  has held. The arrests of the two men Padraic Wilson and Sean Hughes were attacked by Sinn Fein politicians as “ political policing”  to  counter balance the actions against loyalists. Unionists immediately claimed partiality in deciding bail between republican and loyalists.

I accept that there are grounds for interesting speculation about how and why bail has been granted or refused but this has little to do with the judiciary.

Why charge Hughes and Wilson with IRA membership and encouraging a proscribed organisation in a demo that happened eight years ago? Is this a real new lead in the MCartney case? It doesn’t feel like it but who can tell at this stage? If there is no fire behind the smoke this might be seen as an unnecessarily provocative move just as the very moment a dissident republican attack had been foiled.

Why wait so long to lift the loyalists Frazer and Bryson? That one is easier to speculate about – because it’s better to exploit a lull (if that’s what is it is ) in the flags protest. But we’re unlikely to get straight answers to such questions and certainly not from the judiciary. Answers in some form may emerge from the PSNI and the DPP if charges are proceeded with.

Although the judges – and of course the police and the DPP – are now being attacked by both sides, this is not a full blown crisis between the politicians and the criminal justice system.  It even represents a sort of progress.  Republicans now argue for fair treatment from the criminal justice system rather than rejecting it altogether. What is happening is a symptom of the tensions created by an underlying shift in power between unionism and nationalism as a result of growing nationalist numbers and the  implementation of the equality provisions of the Good Friday Agreement.  From time to time there is controversy over where fairness lies and the criminal justice system is caught in the middle.

In an arid zero sum debate –  unionist loss is republican gain or vice versa – the judiciary has boldly moved to assert its good faith and educate the politicians in an impartial justice system which like any other body can make mistakes. The risk the chief justice is taking is that is that he may unwittingly feed an appetite for routine explanations of verdicts and sentences and produce disillusion and even louder complaints when he refuses. This could turn  the judiciary into what he and his colleagues greatly fear, a political football.   Much hangs on Northern Ireland’s politicians behaving responsibly to prevent the judiciary being sucked into their zero sum game.

Judicial Independence in Northern Ireland

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On 6 November the Judicial Independence Project held the sixth in our series of practitioner seminars on ‘Judicial Independence in Northern Ireland’. The series is run under Chatham House Rule but we have prepared a short note which is available on our website. Read it here.

A strong theme that emerged from the seminar was that the current system for administering the court system in Northern Ireland is an interim one – a step on the road to something more permanent – although one that has fortuitously turned out to work quite well. Most participants felt that something like the Irish or Scottish models for court administration, in which the court system is run by judges with a high degree of independence from the legislature and executive, should be the ultimate destination. However, there are practical problems with this because the judiciary in Northern Ireland is so small and it may be difficult for them to devote greater time to administration.

The appointment of judges is also a key issue in Northern Ireland. At present the Northern Ireland Judicial Appointments Commission (NIJAC) is judge-led, in large part because the main political parties did not trust each other with the appointment of judges. Some participants felt that this created an accountability problem for NIJAC and that there should be moves towards greater political oversight, although there was strong disagreement on this point.

Judicial Independence Across the World: Pakistan

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This is the third blog that looks at judicial independence in various countries. We have already examined the situations in Papua New Guinea, Nepal & Morocco. We now turn our attention to Pakistan, where one controversial court case has brought the judiciary, legislature, President and opposition parties into open conflict. In common with some of our other case studies, the separation of powers has become very blurred – the executive and legislature are ignoring court judgments, and the judiciary seem to be unusually active in their rulings over political & moral matters.

Pakistan: In April 2012 the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Yousuf Raza Gilani, was convicted of contempt of court by the nation’s Supreme Court. The judgment said that Mr Gilani had ‘wilfully flouted’ a court order.  The court had ordered Gilani to write to the Swiss authorities requesting them to open a corruption case against the Pakistani President, Asif Ali Zardari. In order to make this ruling the court had to, controversially, strike down the National Reconciliation Ordinance, a 2007 political amnesty law, on the grounds that it was unconstitutional.

Yousuf-Raza-Gilani

Yousuf Raza Gilani

Gilani’s lawyer, Aitaz Ahsan (who is also a senator for Gilani’s Pakistan Peoples Party), countered that reopening a case against a serving President would itself be unconstitutional, as incumbents benefit from legal immunity.

National Assembly members then requested that the Speaker of the National Assembly (Dr. Fehmida Mirza, also a PPP member) ask the Election Commission to have Mr Gilani removed from office and disqualify him as an MP. The opposition argued that under Article 63(1) (g) of Pakistan’s constitution, any person found guilty of defaming or ridiculing the judiciary is banned from being an MP.

On the 24th May 2012 the Speaker refused to refer the case to the election commission claiming that, “I am of the view that the charges… are not relatable to the grounds mentioned (in the constitution)”.

Both main opposition parties, Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) and the Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N), then separately petitioned the Supreme Court. PTI’s petition asks the court to declare Speaker Mirza’s ruling unlawful and issue a stay order against Mr Gilani exercising Prime Ministerial powers until the court has reached a judgment. The petition also asks that the Election Commission decide Gilani’s eligibility. The PML-N simply asks that Mr Gilani is barred from performing further duties.

The petitions will be heard by a three member Supreme Court bench.

The judicial independence picture is further complicated by the fact that Justice Khosa, one of the seven member bench that convicted Gilani in April 2012, thought it appropriate to add a note to the judgment that was somewhat of a morality lecture to Pakistani’s. The note even goes as far as to compare the Pakistani executive with Stalinist Russia and encourages Pakistan’s populace to take note of the Arab Spring!

Judicial Independence Around the World: Nepal & Morocco

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In a previous blog we looked at judicial independence in Papua New Guinea. Now, we turn our attention to judicial politics in Morocco and also in Nepal. The two nations are both facing constitutional upheaval, Nepal is currently ‘in-between Constitutions’ and Morocco has been in the process of wide-ranging reforms since July 2011, when a new constitution came into force.

Nepal: The caretaker Maoist government and opposition parties have recently been struggling to agree a new Constitution. Indeed, the Constituent Assembly was dissolved without a new Constitution in place. This was good news for Supreme Court judge Rana Bahadur Bam who was the subject of impeachment proceedings at the time – without a legislature the impeachment had to be abandoned. Mr Bam was allowed to remain as a sitting judge.

Rana Bahadur Bam had been accused of taking bribes in 2010 from suspects charged with abduction in exchange for giving them light sentences.

On 31st May 2012 gunmen on motorcycles attacked Mr Bam’s car as he left the Bagamukhi temple to drive to court in Kathmandu. Mr Bam was shot six times and later died in hospital.  Without a Constitution it could be argued that the judiciary are truly independent. However, without a legislature (to make law) and an executive (to enforce that law) the judiciary are left dangerously exposed to those in society who care little for justice, as was evidenced by the murder of Judge Bam.

Morocco: In May 2012 the Club of Moroccan judges, which represents more than half of the judiciary, launched a campaign to demand greater judicial independence. The Moroccan royal family and government currently have control of judicial promotions and salaries.

Approximately 2,900 judges then wore a red armband for a week as a form of protest.

Moroccan Judge Red Protest Armband

A red armband is tied to the robe of a Moroccan judge as a form of protest.

King Mohammed VI announced a new government panel, called the ‘supreme body for national dialogue on the reform of justice’. The panel is led by the Minister of Justice, Mustapha Ramid, and comprises forty members (including eight women). The aim is to draft a national judicial charter.

The panel did not get off to the most auspicious of starts when Taieb Nassiri (a former justice minister) suffered a heart attack at one of the panel’s first meetings. On a more positive note, the panel have already established a work schedule – seven topics to discuss and visits to ten cities, starting in Rabat on 7th & 8th June.

King Mohammed VI noted that “the independence of the judiciary, relative to the legislative and executive branches” is specified in the constitution. The monarch is the guarantor of judicial independence (see Article 107 Moroccan Constitution 2011).

Choosing the monarch as guarantor for judicial independence is an interesting concept. On one hand selecting the monarch is a wise choice; it provides a way to protect the judiciary without overtly politicising them – particularly as the integrity of the Monarch is taken as ‘inviolable’ by Article 46 Moroccan Constitution 2011.

At the same time, won’t the wave of democrats that have emerged in the Maghreb since the Arab Spring be troubled by the fact that the unelected judiciary is guaranteed by an unaccountable King?

Judicial Independence Across the World: Papua New Guinea

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In a previous blog  we looked at judicial independence in Greece (where a judge has been appointed caretaker Prime Minister) and Hungary (where the ruling Fidesz have introduced constitutional reforms to place the management of the judiciary firmly in the hands of the executive).

We contrasted this with the stability of judicial independence in the United Kingdom. The debates in this country centre on some very abstruse technicalities, for example the changes to the composition of selection panels for Supreme Court judges proposed by the Crime & Courts Bill 2012. The constitutional position of the judiciary only very rarely enters the public consciousness – think of the recent Peter Hain case, although that was hardly a ‘stop the presses’ type story!

However, much as in Greece and Hungary, in many nations judicial independence is a ‘headline issue’. We are trying to avoid making value judgments on any of these particular cases, and we acknowledge that the judiciary aren’t always sacrosanct. Rather, this blog is just an observation on how judicial independence is a much more pressing political issue in some parts of the world.

We shall begin by looking at the recent, and very chaotic, events that have influenced judicial independence in Papua New Guinea. We hope that this is an appropriate starting point for blogs looking at global judicial independence – it is hard to think of a series of events that could violate the doctrines of the separation of powers more roundly!!!

Papua New Guinea: Two justices of the Papua New Guinean Supreme Court were recently arrested on charges of sedition. Chief Justice Sir Salamo Injia was apprehended by a police unit, led by the Deputy Prime Minister Belden Namah, which stormed into the Chief Justice’s court on 24th May 2012. Justice Nicholas Kirriwom was also detained and questioned by the authorities.

Mr Namah insisted that the Chief Justice was playing politics and was quoted as saying that “the Chief Justice is sick in his head”. The Chief Justice appealed to police and military personnel to abide by his ruling. “This country is being run by men who are happy to use force rather than the rule of law,” he said.

In late May 2012, the two judges had sat as part of a three man bench that ruled (for the second time) that Sir Michael Somare is the legitimate Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea, not Parliament’s choice, Peter O’Neill. Two other Supreme Court judges, Deputy Chief Justice Gibbs Salika & Bernard Sakora, had refused to hand down judgements, citing ethical reasons.  Justice Kirriwom was also accused of authoring an email (sent to other members of the judiciary) that referred to the O’Neill government as illegal.

In late 2011 Sir Michael, the long-time leader of Papua New Guinea, was out of the country receiving medical treatment. Parliament decided that (as Sir Michael had been absent for such a long time) the Prime Minister role was vacant. MP’s then elected Mr O’Neill as the new Prime Minister. In December 2011 the Supreme Court ruled that Sir Michael was the legitimate leader of Papua New Guinea, which briefly led to Sir Michael & Mr O’Neill being Prime Minister simultaneously!

Since then Mr O’Neill has been effectively running Papua New Guinea and it was his government that ordered the arrest of the judges.

Rather confusingly, the Deputy Speaker (Francis Marus) recently declared to Parliament that the court’s decisions would be accepted. However, Mr. Marus said that Sir Michael could not be reinstated as he had missed three sessions of Parliament since January. Nominations for a new Prime Minister were then thrown open.

This led to Mr O’Neill being elected (again) by Parliamentarians on 30th May 2012. The situation should become clearer after general elections in June 2012.