Lawyers turn human rights spotlight on Camp X-Ray

The treatment of prisoners at Camp X-Ray, the notorious detainee centre for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, was hauled into the spotlight by the media this week.Supported by the Law Society and Bar Council, lawyers for the families of the detainees 'are threatening to take the government to court for complicity in what they claim is the prisoners' unlawful detention' (Financial Times, 26 February).The government is accused, variously, of 'undermining justice by telling the mother of one of the suspects that she did not need a lawyer' (The Telegraph, 26 February), 'aiding or assisting the US in unlawfully detaining British terror suspects' (The Guardian, 26 February), and 'breaching the detainees' human rights' (Daily Express, 26 February) with their 'outrageous' (The Times, 26 February) behaviour.

Predictably, it was left to the Sun to provide the dissenting voice, saying the Law Society and Bar Council 'were blasted after they gave a platform to the parents of two Britons held at Camp X-Ray' (26 February).The legal bodies apparently committed the heinous crime of 'letting the parents speak' but 'did not allow them to be quizzed on how their sons got involved in the Afghan war'.Another of the week's big stories, the judge in the Damilola Taylor murder trial throwing out the evidence of the chief prosecution witness and hence clearing one of the accused boys (see Lawyer in the news below), focused attention on 'the established practice of newspapers offering rewards for help in securing criminal convictions' (The Independent, 28 February).

Such rewards were described as 'inducements' by the trial judge, Mr Justice Hooper, and the paper quoted criminal law experts warning that 'even the most truthful or most honest witness could have their evidence disregarded' due to the 'perception that the evidence is unreliable because...

a carrot is being dangled in front of the witness'.However, Malcolm Fowler, former chairman of the Law Society's criminal law committee, while agreeing that 'all these payments need to be looked at', warned that 'we must be careful that the government does not use the exercise to bring in prohibitions which restrict the freedom of the press'.News that the Office for the Supervision of Solicitors is to investigate London firm Charles Russell over the 'busty blonde'e-mail was widely reported.

A former employee sued for sexual discrimination after a lawyer listed his ideal qualities for her replacement.

The case settled confidentially last month.An editorial in the London Evening Standard noted how 'committing a rash thought to e-mail is so easy'.Spin doctor Jo Moore came to regret it, the paper recalled, as did Claire Swire, whose e-mail to her boyfriend at City law firm Norton Rose flashed around the world and on to the front pages.'The two solicitors concerned cannot be the only bosses who fail to realise that their own secretaries, often younger and more computer-literate, may read what others in the office write on-line,' the paper said.

'In this case at least, the e-mail has proved deadlier than the male.'And finally, a debate has been raging this week in The Independent's letters pages about the depiction of the legal profession in literature throughout the ages.With Chaucer's 'Sergeant of the law' argued to be a 'notably sympathetic portrait' (26 February), the contest for most unfavourable depiction seems to be between Langland's 'pompous' description in Piers Plowman (26 February), the 'savagely satirical' portraits by Ben Jonson and Thomas Middleton, and Petrarch's cutting description of lawyers as 'noisy, chattering jades' (both 28 February).Victoria MacCallum