Slashdot Mirror
UK Seeks To Hold Terrorism Trial In Secret
hazeii (5702) writes in with news about a secret trial set to take place in England. 'A major terrorism trial is set to be held entirely in secret for the first time in British legal history in an unprecedented departure from the principles of open justice, the court of appeal has heard. The identities of the two defendants charged with serious terror offences are being withheld from the public, and the media are banned from being present in court to report the forthcoming trial against the two men, known only as AB and CD.'
My theory is because currently terrorism still has a bit of 'awe' factor behind it. Treating these cases like any other case would diminish that.
If that's the case, then we've gone backwards in the last year. I was incredibly relieved when the CPS decided to charge Lee Rigby's murderers with murder, rather than elevating them to terrorists. This meant that they could be shut down when they started sprouting their insane bullshit - which is what happened during the trial.
When that happened, I thought we'd started to reach a turning point - that terrorism wasn't a simple way of getting us to agree with policies - and I haven't received or heard any of the ridiculous ACPO* "suspect your neighbour" leaflets. We do have an election coming up next year, so maybe that's the reason.
The sane way to deal with this would be to charge them attempted murder, thereby making any political statements irrelevant to the trial.
* The ACPO is tentatively a non-profit organisation, but they do like to lobby and earn cash for selling records at 11667% of cost (£70 for a 60p cost)