A. AND OTHERS v. THE UNITED KINGDOM JUDGMENT
43
advocates will be able to take from the client before they see the closed material. Both
judge and special advocates will have to probe the claim that the closed material
should remain closed with great care and considerable scepticism. There is ample
evidence from elsewhere of a tendency to over-claim the need for secrecy in terrorism
cases: see Serrin Turner and Stephen J Schulhofer, The Secrecy Problem in Terrorism
Trials, 2005, Brennan Centre for Justice at NYU School of Law. Both judge and
special advocates will have stringently to test the material which remains closed. All
must be alive to the possibility that material could be redacted or gisted in such a way
as to enable the special advocates to seek the client’s instructions upon it. All must be
alive to the possibility that the special advocates be given leave to ask specific and
carefully tailored questions of the client. Although not expressly provided for in CPR
r 76.24, the special advocate should be able to call or have called witnesses to rebut
the closed material. The nature of the case may be such that the client does not need to
know all the details of the evidence in order to make an effective challenge.
67. The best judge of whether the proceedings have afforded a sufficient and
substantial measure of procedural protection is likely to be the judge who conducted
the hearing. ...”
Lord Carswell observed:
“There is a very wide spectrum of cases in which closed material is relied on by the
Secretary of State. At one extreme there may be cases in which the sole evidence
adverse to the controlee is closed material, he cannot be told what the evidence is or
even given its gist and the special advocate is not in a position to take sufficient
instructions to mount an effective challenge to the adverse allegations. At the other
end there may be cases where the probative effect of the closed material is very slight
or merely corroborative of strong open material and there is no obstacle to presenting
a defence. There is an infinite variety of possible cases in between. The balance
between the open material and the closed material and the probative nature of each
will vary from case to case. The special advocate may be able to discern with
sufficient clarity how to deal with the closed material without obtaining direct
instructions from the controlee. These are matters for the judge to weigh up and assess
in the process of determining whether the controlee has had a fair trial. The
assessment is ... fact-specific. The judge who has seen both the open and the closed
material and had the benefit of the contribution of the special advocate is in much the
best position to make it. I do consider, however, that there is a fairly heavy burden on
the controlee to establish that there has been a breach of Article 6, for the legitimate
public interest in withholding material on valid security grounds should be given due
weight. The courts should not be too ready to hold that a disadvantage suffered by the
controlee through the withholding of material constitutes a breach of Article 6.”
Lord Brown held as follows:
“There may perhaps be cases, wholly exceptional though they are likely to be,
where, despite the best efforts of all concerned by way of redaction, anonymisation,
and gisting, it will simply be impossible to indicate sufficient of the Secretary of
State’s case to enable the suspect to advance any effective challenge to it. Unless in
these cases the judge can nevertheless feel quite sure that in any event no possible
challenge could conceivably have succeeded (a difficult but not, I think, impossible
conclusion to arrive at ...), he would have to conclude that the making or, as the case
may be, confirmation of an order would indeed involve significant injustice to the
suspect. In short, the suspect in such a case would not have been accorded even ‘a
substantial measure of procedural justice’ (Chahal, [cited above] § 131)