12 A. AND OTHERS v. THE UNITED KINGDOM JUDGMENT ... 43. The appellants’ proportionality challenge to the order and section 23 is, in my opinion, sound, for all the reasons they gave and also for those given by the European Commissioner for Human Rights and the Newton Committee. The Attorney-General could give no persuasive answer.” 21. In addition, the majority held that the 2001 Act was discriminatory and inconsistent with Article 14 of the Convention, from which there had been no derogation. The applicants were in a comparable situation to United Kingdom nationals suspected of being international terrorists, with whom they shared the characteristics of being irremovable from the United Kingdom and being considered a threat to national security. Since the detention scheme was aimed primarily at the protection of the United Kingdom from terrorist attack, rather than immigration control, there was no objective reason to treat the applicants differently on grounds of their nationality or immigration status. 22. Although the applicants’ appeal had included complaints under Articles 3 and 16 of the Convention, the House of Lords did not consider it necessary to determine these complaints since it had found the derogation to be unlawful on other grounds. 23. It granted a quashing order in respect of the derogation order, and a declaration under section 4 of the 1998 Act (see paragraph 94 below) that section 23 of the 2001 Act was incompatible with Articles 5 § 1 and 14 of the Convention in so far as it was disproportionate and permitted discriminatory detention of suspected international terrorists. C. The certification proceedings: the “generic” judgment and appeals 24. Meanwhile, SIAC’s hearing of the applicants’ individual appeals against certification commenced in May 2003, after the Court of Appeal had given judgment in the derogation proceedings but before the above judgment of the House of Lords. 25. For the purposes of each appeal to SIAC, the Secretary of State filed an “open statement” summarising the facts connected to the decision to certify each applicant and as much of the supporting evidence which the Secretary of State considered could be disclosed without giving rise to any risk to national security. A further, “closed” statement of facts and evidence was also placed before SIAC in each case. 26. On 29 October 2003 SIAC issued a “generic” judgment in which it made a number of findings of general application to all the appeals against certification. As regards preliminary issues, it found, inter alia, that it had jurisdiction to hear an appeal against certification even where the person certified had