Do the UK anti-terror laws go too far? The case of John Letts and Sally Lane
Last week the UK Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act 2019 received royal assent. It builds on the Terrorism Act 2000 and other legislation introduced in the last decade in response to attacks such as the London Tube bombings. These laws give the police and government extra powers to pursue terrorists, including detention without trial for extended periods. The new Act makes it illegal to watch videos supporting terrorism, and merely expressing a view that could be interpreted as being favourable to a terrorist group will be a criminal offence.
This legislation is supposed to protect the UK, but there is growing concern that the cost to our civil liberties is not only too high, but counter-productive. Take the case of John Letts and Sally Lane from Oxford, who in 2016 were charged with funding terrorism after they tried to send money to their son Jack in Syria. A recent convert to Islam, 18-year-old Jack had travelled to Kuwait to learn Arabic. From there in 2014 he went to Syria, wanting to live in an Islamic society and thinking he might be able to serve in a humanitarian role. When he found out what was really happening he asked his parents for money to escape, but the payment was blocked. Jack is still there, now held by the Kurds in Rojava, and his parents are undergoing an ordeal of their own.
It began with the police turning up at their house at 7 am one day in 2016. John and Sally were arrested and charged, refused bail and put in prison for five days, until a second judge released them, saying: “Two perfectly decent people have ended up in custody because of the love of their child”. Their trial at the Old Bailey began in January 2017 but was adjourned in order for them to appeal against a point of law.
Their lawyers argued that the question before the jury should be whether they really meant to fund terrorism, a charge that should be easy to refute. But last year the Supreme Court ruled that their intentions were not relevant. They would be guilty if, given the information that was available to them at the time, the jury considered that a ‘reasonable person’ would suspect that the money might be used for terrorism. The judges were unanimous that Parliament had intended the Terrorism Act of 2000 to be interpreted in this broader way, and when John and Sally return to the Old Bailey this May they will be facing up to 14 years in prison if the judgment goes against them.
It is now nearly three years since their initial arrest and their lives have been dominated by the criminal investigation. This is of course on top of their anxieties for their son, who has not been able to speak directly to them for over three years, and whose Kurdish captors do not allow him to communicate with the outside world. Police intrusion on their lives has taken many forms and has been a constant and inescapable reality. Regular nocturnal visits from counter-terrorism officers were a feature in the early days, to check that they were observing their curfew of midnight and 6am every day. Later they were required to sign in at a police station every day at 9am; when John forgot once, the result was a weekend in the cells and a court hearing. Their bank accounts have been frozen.
Sometimes police surveillance has descended into farce. Friends who e-mailed them offering to help them with their rent when they were first arrested received a visit from counter-terrorism officers and were told they too risked charges of funding terrorism; when they asked if they could give them a 3 kg round of cheese instead (they are dairy farmers), the answer was still no, in case John and Sally sold it to support terrorism.
Holding down a job is difficult. “I managed to get a good job at the university once,” Sally says, “but that came to an end when a postgraduate student recognized me from my picture in the papers. I was out the next day. Now I just have to take whatever casual work I can find, after the job centre advised me to get a job where no-one knows me. How are we supposed to live?”
The ill effects of the Terrorism Act spread beyond their family. At the time of writing this, their lodger’s bank account has been frozen for eight days, his bank refusing to give him access to his own money, or give him a reason why. “He is a 21-year-old student at the university and could now be stuck with a bad credit rating for the rest of his life,” says Sally, “but according to our lawyer, the way he is being treated is ‘perfectly legal under the sweeping powers of the Terrorism Act’.”
John has found some distraction in his work, as an organic farmer and baker. He began with a PhD researching ancient wheat grains rescued from medieval thatched roofs, and now is active in the movement to make real bread from heritage wheat. He featured on Radio 4’s On Your Farm last May, talking about his project on an organic farm in Buckinghamshire. As he speaks eloquently about his life’s work, it is difficult to imagine that he could be a threat to the state.
He has found it hard to keep up with his research when his laptop is regularly confiscated and not always returned — “the police went through 80,000 images of thatch once, looking for evidence” — but he is full of plans for rebuilding Britain’s grain economy. Unless of course he’s sent to prison, something that is very much in the forefront of his mind.
One of the things that keeps him going is the knowledge that their case matters for other people as well. “I’m ready to go to prison, because trying to save my son’s life was the right thing to do. But it will set a legal precedent for how the anti-terrorism laws are applied, and that will make it easier for innocent people to be jailed. You could be put in prison for buying a cup of coffee for an anti-fracking protestor — it’s the same principle.”
Perhaps the hardest thing for them to bear is that a court order forbids them from talking to the media about Jack’s activities in the year or so before their arrest, as that might prejudice the jury at their trial. This means that they can do nothing to shift the toxic associations of terrorism that cling to their son, beyond asserting his innocence and good character and hoping to be believed.
They are isolated also by virtue of the criminal investigation itself. An irony of their situation is that while for most people the menacing constriction that it has brought to their lives is difficult to imagine or even believe, for others, their case is routine and the only thing that sets it apart is that John and Sally are middle-class white professionals.
But maybe that is what it takes to bring the message home. In their story we can see the realities of a police state, something we thought only happened under totalitarian regimes. We might ask if this is really the price we want to pay to protect ourselves from terrorism. We might draw parallels with the recent conviction of the Stansted 15, where peaceful protesters were prosecuted under laws drafted in response to Lockerbie, an action for which the UN recently criticized the UK government.
Terrorism is a serious threat, and although the caliphate of ISIS is nearly defeated, the movement itself is not. The UK and other governments must give a high priority to counter-terrorist activities. But this should not be a knee-jerk response, driven by an authoritarian populism which is not too far from the impulse behind ISIS itself. We must be bigger and smarter than that. Let us make sure that the case of John and Sally is not a warning of what is to come.
For more on the case, see https://freejackletts.wordpress.com/
edited on 28–2–2019 to remove incorrect reference to date of John and Sally’s arrest.
