edmund clark 'control order house

CONTROLORDERHOUSE

EDMUNDCLARK

Control Order HouseEdmund Clark

United Kingdom Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005

Three months after the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001, the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act came into force in the United Kingdom. Part 4 of this Act allowed for the detention of foreign terror suspects without trial or the prospect of deportation. In 2004, the House of Lords ruled that this measure was discriminatory and incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights.

The Prevention of Terrorism Act was passed in 2005 to replace Part 4 of the original Act. The new Act gave the Secretary of State at the Home Office the power to place a Control Order on anyone of any nationality, including British citizens or residents, suspected of involvement with terrorist activity. This included the power to relocate them to a house in an alien town or city and impose condi-tions on their daily life and communication.

In these cases the Home Office did not prosecute the controlled person, nor reveal the full basis of the evidence against them. This evidence may have come from foreign intelligence agencies or from sources inadmissible in court; or it may not have been complete enough to support a case in a criminal trial. The evidence only had to support ‘reasonable suspicion’, not prove guilt.

In January 2012, Control Orders were superseded by Terrorist Prevention and Investigation Measures (TPIMs). These are argu-ably both less onerous in terms of the restrictions imposed on the controlled person and more rigorous in terms of the evidential test. The Secretary of State has to have a ‘reasonable belief’ rather than ‘suspicion’, but can still rely on secret evidence untested by normal legal process which does not have to prove guilt.

Control Orders lasting from a few months to more than four years were made against 52 people over the lifetime of the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005. Initially these people were foreign nationals but by the end of 2011 they were all British citizens. Nine controlled persons have had their Control Orders replaced with TPIMs.

Breaching the terms of a Control Order or TPIM, including the terms of living in a Home Office provided residence, is punishable by an unlimited fine or a prison sentence of up to five years.

Permission and Conditions

In December 2011, I was the first artist allowed access to work and stay in a house in which a man suspected of involvement with terrorist-related activity had been placed under a Control Order.

I had to register my equipment with the Home Office and agree to have my material screened by both the Home Office and the controlled person’s lawyers. I had to agree not to reveal his identity or where he was living. To do so would be an offence, as would assisting a controlled person to breach their Control Order. Extra conditions in relation to my equipment were imposed on him while I was there.

Communication and conversation in the house were, very probably, monitored.

Experience and Photographs

I was granted up to six days access and planned to create work using photographs, video and sound for an interactive digital instal-lation. Access was interrupted, however, and I had only three days and two nights in the house with the controlled person.

During this time I measured and photographed the house. The majority of these photographs were taken quickly, uncomposed, with the flash on automatic and the lens on wide angle. They were taken with the idea of stitching them together as interior panoramas. The thumbnails shown here are unedited and in the order in which they were taken.

This house is a physical manifestation of the sanctioning by Parlia-ment of a form of control or detention without trial in the UK. These photographs, building plans and scanned, redacted documents give form to one of the locations where this experience has taken place.

Any material in this book might become evidence in the controlled person’s case. His lawyers have requested that I do not go into the detail of what he told me about particular aspects of his experience.

We are looking at the control imposed by the state on an individual and the implications this has for his personal and familial stability. Order and chaos are present.

The archetypal façade of this house in a faceless suburb is also about the reaction of a government and society to the fear and chaos of terrorist attacks, and the consequent continuing reality and representation of an undefined threat from within. This house is Britain.

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CE’s Diary

CE is the legal designation for the controlled person in this house. These are not his initials.

On my first visit I brought a pad of lined paper, a sketch pad and some pens and pencils. His lawyers had asked me not to record an interview with him and I had to be careful about what we discussed. I wanted to explore his experience of the house so I asked him to write a diary and to draw his impressions of his space.

He did not respond to the idea of drawing but did record his activity for three days. He said this was enough as his life was very repetitive. His movement in the house was mostly limited to the kitchen, the middle living room and the downstairs bathroom. He slept on the sofa in the middle living room. His wife and two young children visited at the weekend. His children slept on mattresses in the front living room.

As a guest, I slept in the front bedroom upstairs.

_MG_3060.jpg

Living Room 1

Living Room 2Bathroom 1

Hall

Kitchen

Bedroom 1

Bedroom 2

Bedroom 3

Bathroom 2

High Court Judgment

I doubt many of you will read this Judgment. It is long and in places hard to follow. But it is fascinating and revealing.

It is out of proportion to the sum of the visual content of this book. It is included because this size represents how the scales of justice appear to be weighted in the case of a controlled person. It is the endgame of a sequence of imbalances.

This is the complete document recording the hearing, in open court, by a High Court judge of the case for imposing a Control Order on CE. When a Control Order or TPIM is enforced a judge has to examine that the Secretary of State is using his or her power correctly: do they have reasonable grounds for the Order; are the conditions enforced reasonable?

The Judgment defines or contains some key things:• a review of the correct use of power by the Secretary of State• legal definitions of terrorism and terrorist-related activity• personal information about CE• the case against CE• discussion of the use of closed material or secret evidence• justification for the measures enforced by the Order and their impact on CE and his family

The case against him reads persuasively. It is hard not to feel uncomfortable. It is hard not to have a suspicion. And that is all the judge had to think.

Again and again he refers to closed judgments or closed sessions or closed material. This is material that had not been seen by CE’s lawyers – and the judge did not hear it tested or challenged as he would have in a trial. This evidence heard in private was either too incomplete to present in court, or came from sources that were inadmissible or could not be revealed (e.g. phone tapping, bugging or from paid informants or covert personnel) or foreign intelligence sources the Home Office did not wish to compromise.

In this hearing CE’s lawyers were effectively trying to disprove a suspicion – without knowing where the evidence had come from or what it was.

Since 2009 a controlled person must be given sufficient informa-tion about the allegations against him in order to be able to instruct his lawyers. In closed court he can nominate a security-cleared barrister called a Special Advocate to represent him. Special Advocates are appointed by the Attorney General, the government’s chief law officer. Once the Special Advocate has seen the secret evidence, however, they are not allowed further communication with a controlled person or his lawyers, even though they continue to act for him until the conclusion of the case.

I am not writing to persuade you for or against these measures. There are arguments as to the necessity, effectiveness and fairness of the use of Control Orders, TPIMs and Special Advocates. It is for lawyers and campaigners to argue their cases.

It would be facile to say that this is the territory of Kafka because this is not fiction. This is history.

CE was moved from the Control Order House while I was working with him. He is now living under the conditions of a TPIM in a house closer to his family.

After two years, when the conditions of the current TPIM expire, a further TPIM could be served if the Secretary of State at the Home Office has ‘reasonable belief’ that there has been new terrorist-related activity.

Edmund ClarkControl Order House

Photography & text by Edmund ClarkElevations & floor plans by Simon BarkerDesign by Ben Weaver© 2012 All rights reserved

edmundclark.com

Previous books by Edmund Clark:Guantanamo: If the Light Goes Out (2010)Still Life Killing Time (2007)

Acknowledgements:CEHenry MillerSarah KellasRussell FraserBen JaffeySimon BarkerEmma Morris & Celia Davies at PhotoworksControl Order/TPIM Officer

Published 2012 by Here Press, LondonHP04First editionISBN 978–0–9574724–0–2

herepress.org

HEREPRESS

edmund clark 'control order house

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