Simon Jenkins is on David Blunkett's trail again, criticising the home secretary and the court of appeal for relying on evidence, gleaned from torture in foreign parts, to hold terrorist suspects indefinitely.

"SO THE Home Secretary, David Blunkett, is having trouble with his friends, the tabloids. Well, well. For years he has been treating them like a skinhead playing with rottweilers. He has crammed prisons, abused judges, taunted left-wingers and pandered to the mob. Suddenly the snarling beasts turn on their handler and savage him. Before you can say “liberal” a large portion of the Home Secretary’s anatomy is raw flesh.

Where, he might wonder, did the tabloids gather their information about his love life? How rigorous were their sources? From whom was their evidence extracted, and with what bribes and duress? How do these journalists now rate their pledges of respect for human rights? The answers are probably as robust as those that Mr Blunkett deploys against the ten detainees whose case came before the Court of Appeal last week, whom he brands “terrorists”. His victims claimed the evidence against them was gleaned from prisoners who had been tortured. Unlike that in Mr Blunkett’s case, this evidence really matters. These men have been in prison for two years without trial or normal civil rights.

In prison they will stay. Three appeal court judges inexplicably found in favour of Mr Blunkett, albeit one of them with reservations. Lord Justice Laws declared himself “quite unable to see” why the Home Secretary should not rely on evidence “gained by torture”, if the torturers belonged to states “over which he has no power of direction”. Torture is apparently fine so long as the torturers are not British. I sense that this is what might be called an old-fashioned judge.

He then went further and added that he could not even see why Mr Blunkett had a “duty of solemn inquiry as to the interrogation methods used”. If he wants to declare an accused a terrorist, any evidence would presumably do, even if it were scraped off the walls of Abu Ghraib jail.

These detainees are not accused of any act or planned act of terrorism, only of membership of al-Qaeda. They have the option of leaving England and returning to their home country, but they claim that this would be at risk of their lives. They want to stay free in Britain. Since this is in part an immigration case, the appeal court may have considered the burden of proof on the Home Office less than onerous. But that is quite different from liberating the Home Secretary to sweep the torture chambers of the world for accusations against his victims...

...In The Times on Monday a former immigration scrutineer, Sir Brian Barder, attacked the appeal court decision. Surely, he said, the court should have issued “a ringing condemnation of reliance on evidence obtained by torture, wherever and by whomever practised, as a basis for imprisoning people indefinitely and without trial”.

It is scarcely believable that such words need writing in Britain in the 21st century. They do."

I don't always agree with Jenkins but in this instance I find his central arguments to be compelling and persuasive.