European Court of Human Rights rules for prisoner's right to vote

The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that banning prisoners from voting breaches their human rights. The ruling looks like it might force a change in British legislation with a spokesman for the Department for Constitutional Affairs saying it will now give the matter "urgent consideration."

In other words the Britsh Government lost and rightly so.

Perhaps it might also be possible to have a crack at one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in the history of the British legal system and give a certain rather low-profile individual by the name of Harry Maurice Roberts the right to a fair and just trial - a fair trial rather unlike the fair trials he hasn't been given for the 9 years since the end of the 30-year whole-of-life tariff that he served and continues to serve for reasons that the parole board will not divulge and against which he cannot defend himself.

That it is a piece of legislation reserved for use against foreign nationals detained on security grounds in times of national security that is being used against a British citizen and ex-British serviceman in relation to a crime of 40 years ago for which Roberts has served his sentence - plus nine additional and unexplained years - demonstrates quite how flexible British legislation is when certain forces are at work to make it unjustly so.

In June 2004 Terry Waite was interviewed on Radio 4's Today programme in relation to the case of Harry Roberts and provided an overview of the injustice and the issues at stake. The interview is available on the BBC web site here and here.

Maybe it's a coincidence that the court of appeal ruled against Harry Roberts again this year on 7 July 2005, the day when 'four miserable bombers... i'm not saying there are four bombers... four miserable events' occurred in London (Source: Sir Ian Blair).

Then again, maybe it's not.