Chagos Islanders have outstanding win against the UK Government.

HOUSE OF LORDS MINUTES OF PROCEEDINGS Die Mercurii 16° Februarii 2000

A remarkable day in the Patel Household ...

PRAYERS were read by the Lord Bishop of St Albans.

1. Lord Patel of Blackburn—Adam Hafejee Patel Esquire, having been created Baron Patel of Blackburn, of Langho in the County of Lancashire, for life by Letters Patent dated 14th February 2000, was introduced between the Lord Taylor of Blackburn and the Baroness Castle of Blackburn, the Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod and Garter King of Arms preceding; and took and subscribed the oath pursuant to statute.

Just to set people's mind at rest ...this is not I, I am Lord Patel of the Internet.

But my noble Lords did note a papar "set before them" ..

2. Diego Garcia—Exchange of Notes between the United Kingdom and the United States of America concerning the construction of a Monitoring Facility on Diego Garcia, British Indian Ocean Territory (British Indian Ocean Territory Agreement 1999).

So on that day the UK / US Governments were up to their normal tricks of arranging affairs on far away places.Despite what Magna Carta says .. "No man shall be ... exiled … but by lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land" not forgetting The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948 states in Article 13(2) that "Everyone has the right to leave any country including his own and to return to his country". The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, 1966 states in Article 12(4) that "No-one shall be arbitrarily deprived of the right to enter his own country", a Covenant ratified by the UK in 1976.

Diego Garcia is the largest of the Chagos Islands and had been effectively exchanged (what we lawyers call "sold") to the US for an Air Base by Labour Peer Lord Chalfont and Lord Callaghan who was a bit behind on the HP for the "Chevalining" or secret upgrading of the Polaris Missiles - which he forgot to tell his Party members about at the time. The islanders were shipped off to Mauritius, mony that went to the Mauritius Government as a sort of blood money never saw them and so they were consigned to poverty. Overall there are 2000 of them and 200 live in the UK after a change in the law by Jack Straw over their status.

The US turned them into a massive air base so they could readily bomb the living shit out of Iraq and anywhere it took and takes their fancy. Lady Amos always equivocated whenevr asked if the Americans had one of their Ghost Prisons there, as did Jack Straw so that is a fair indication that they do.

Naturally the Chagos Islanders (The Ilois - The Islanders) were a bit shirty and through a great deal of effort over many years managed to get the House of Lords to agree that the Islands should be returned to them.Which the High Court agreed with in a famouse decision in November 200.

Justice Ousely in October 2003 then ruled against them (in a very questionable judgement much prized by the guys in pin stripes of a judicial cock-up) so they appealed and won in the House of Lords in 2004.

The Queens Dirty Tricks department came in under the heady presence of Lady Amos, (see pic)one of Blair's ennobled unelected chicks who was also Leader of Her Majesty's Privy Council and produced an Order in Council - a Mediaeval instrument that says effectively I am the Monarch, this is what I am doing and no one can stop me.On 10 June last year , election day for local authorities and the European Parliament, Bill Rammell, then a junior Foreign Office minister, slipped a written statement in to the Commons announcing that the Queen had approved an "order in council" banning the Chagos islanders from ever going home.

(See Written Ministerial Statement of Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and
Commonwealth Affairs, 422 Parl. Deb. (Hansard), H.C. (2004) 32-34WS, )

On 7 October, however, the High Court agreed to a judicial review of Rammell's royal decree at the request of Richard Gifford of Sheridans their lawyer.... who one must say has been a tower of strength throughout this to the Ilois. Well Done Dick.

Well today her Maj got stopped in her tracks.

In the High Court the Order in Council was overturned.

Sir Sydney Kentridge QC had described the treatment of the Chagossians as "outrageous, unlawful and a breach of accepted moral standards".

He said there was no known precedent "for the lawful use of prerogative powers to remove or exclude an entire population of British subjects from their homes and place of birth".

But John Howell QC, appearing for the Foreign Office, argued the government acted within its powers, and did not accept that any residents of the territory were unlawfully removed or excluded in the period 1965-1973.

The local Ilois people, he said, who left the islands and re-settled in Mauritius, received compensation that eminent English lawyers described as fair.

Essentially this now means that Lady Amos's order in Council is null. It is void.They are free to return

BUT

The US says it opposes any return on security grounds. See Postscriptum.

Recently, Jack Straw - then Foreign Secretary - said that a return was not "practical".

Naturally the government was given permission to appeal, which they will. Tony Balir. although a lawyer , hates the independence of the Judiciary so like Hitler he, with his fat flatmate Lord Falconer of the enormous wattles and Fat belly are stitching up the selection of the Judges etc, etc,You can be sure that there is no way TB is going until he has that sorted out, he doesn't like confusing the Law with Justice.



MEANWHILE IN THE LAND OF THE FREE

The Chagossians had sued the US and US officials including Mr McNamara ..

United States Court of Appeals
for the District of Columbia Circuit Decided on April 21st 2006


Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge BROWN.
BROWN, Circuit Judge: In this case, we confront serious
allegations involving events occurring forty years ago on the far
side of the world. Appellants claim the United States government
forcibly removed them from their homes on islands in the
Indian Ocean in order to construct a military base. The district
court dismissed all of Appellants’ claims against the United
States and the individual defendants. We affirm the district
court’s decision, finding that Appellants’ claims present
nonjusticiable political questions.


This is well worth reading as a VERY useful history of the way the Churchillian "Special relationship" that he invoked at the time of his Iron Curtain speech at Fenton.