Letter to the Guardian: Labour's casual links to the rule of law

11.46.00am GMT Tue 24th Nov 2009

The appalling injustice done to wrongly accused Lofti Raissi (Secret files show UK courts were misled over 9/11 suspects, 23 November) of course demands an apology from Jack Straw and former ministers. It also justifies the payment of considerable compensation from taxpayers for sins perpetrated under the New Labour regime of casual acquaintance with the rule of law.

But in addition, this case, along with those of Binyam Mohamed, Moazzam Begg, Bisher al-Rawi, Jamil el-Banna and many others, strengthens the need for a public enquiry into the sloppy, shameful and criminal practices of the "war on terror". This includes kidnap and torture, as well as the control-order regime.

Your account reveals the astonishing extent to which the Metropolitan police and the Crown Prosecution Service relied on slurs, innuendoes, assumptions, "profiling" and sheer wrong information that would be laughable if the consequences for individual people were not so terrible. I produced a report for the European parliament earlier this year which demanded safeguards against abusive profiling activities.

We need to get back to disciplined investigative policing which focuses on the production of sound evidence for proper and fair trials, including the use, where appropriate, of intercept evidence. Relying on dodgy tip-offs to ruin lives has damaged not only Blair's and Straw's reputations, but also Britain's.

Sarah Ludford MEP

(This letter was published in The Guardian on Tuesday 24 November 2009.)