[Media-watch] ppiece on spin and 'terror' trials

[David Miller]

for info

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/media/story/0,12123,877329,00.html

Spin 'endangering terror trials' 

Richard Norton-Taylor
Saturday January 18, 2003
The Guardian 

The government is endangering the right to a fair trial of people arrested under terrorist laws, the civil rights group Liberty warned yesterday. 

Government and media spin on news of arrests made it much more difficult for juries in trials to concentrate on the actual evidence, or lack of it, John Wadham, Liberty's director said. 

"Sometimes stories of arrests are linked with completely unrelated alleged threats and seem to tie in all too neatly with the government's media agenda" on fighting terrorism, he added. "The stories of charges not pursued or dropped never garner the same attention". 

Mr Wadham referred to a spate of media stories late last year when arrests of terrorist suspects were linked to entirely unrelated, and earlier, warnings of the possibility of gas attacks on the London underground. 

"Those caught up in the snare of our draconian terrorist legislation are now all presumed guilty. 

"We must not risk a situation where the possibility of a fair trial is so eroded that we cannot safely acquit the innocent and convict the guilty," he said. 

He referred to what he called the "moral panic" of the 1970s and 1980s when notorious Irish-based terrorist bombings led to serious miscarriages of justice, including the Birmingham Six and Guildford Four cases. 

"The guardian of the rights of suspects on arrest", said Mr Wadham, was the attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, who had to act "in both the public interest and the interests of the government at different times of the same day". However hard he might try, Mr Wadham asked whether it was realistic to expect a member of the government in these circumstances to be able to take on "such considerable forces". 

Whitehall officials have been concerned about political pressure on the security and intelligence services in the fight against terrorism. 

Government lawyers are also under pressure from ministers to bring cases, potentially with a high profile, quickly to court.