A tribunal that hears complaints against the UK intelligence services is due to rule in a major state surveillance case on the confidentiality of conversations between lawyers and their clients.
The judgment at the investigatory powers tribunal (IPT) could be a decisive moment in the protracted courtroom manoeuvres involving the government and legal advisers to the Libyan dissident Abdel Hakim Belhaj, who was abducted in 2004 in a joint UK-US rendition operation and forcibly returned to Muammar Gaddafi’s regime.
A key section of the judgment, however, may be kept secret. At an earlier hearing last month, James Eadie QC, for the government, told the tribunal that making a public determination of whether or not there had been interception of sensitive material could endanger public safety.
The IPT, he urged, should stick to a policy of “neither confirm, nor deny”, known as NCND. “In circumstances where to depart from the NCND approach would cause damage to national security … the tribunal should adopt an approach which does not reveal the fact that interception has taken place.”
Belhaj is supported by Reprieve, Amnesty International and other human rights groups. The case was launched following revelations by the American whistleblower Edward Snowden exposing the extent of online and telephone surveillance carried out by US and UK monitoring agencies.
The government has already admitted that the policies and procedures governing the handling of legally privileged material were unlawful for the past five years because the safeguards were not made public. Exchanges between lawyers and their clients are entitled to a special level of legal protection.
