amounting to a de facto amnesty for human treatment at secret CIA detention facilities rights violations during the conflict. between 2003 and 2006. In April, another In July, the government also introduced the Guantánamo Bay detainee, Abu Zubaydah, Judicial Review and Courts Bill, which filed a petition against the USA, the UK and contains provisions that would decrease the five other countries before the UN Working likelihood of victims obtaining effective Group on Arbitrary Detention. remedies for human rights violations through FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION legal challenges and remove proper judicial oversight over certain tribunal decisions The USA government appealed a UK court particularly impacting asylum seekers and decision, issued in January, to refuse its migrants. request to extradite Julian Assange. The USA A government-commissioned review of the successfully widened the scope of its appeal Human Rights Act 1998 ended in October. in August. In December, the High Court The government subsequently proposed far- granted the appeal and ordered Assange's reaching changes to the Act that would extradition, accepting diplomatic assurances significantly erode human rights protection in from the USA that Assange would not be held the UK, including by increasing deviation in solitary confinement. Assange appealed from European Court of Human Rights that decision in late December seeking 7 judgments and making it harder for people to review by the UK Supreme Court. Assange bring human rights claims. faced prosecution in the USA for the SEXUAL AND REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS publication of disclosed documents as part of his work with Wikileaks. The ongoing failure to deliver fully In May, the European Court of Human commissioned and funded abortion services Rights ruled that the UK government’s bulk in Northern Ireland in line with the new interception of communications powers did legislative framework left access to healthcare not contain sufficient safeguards against in a fragile state and created a “postcode abuse, thus violating the rights to privacy and 8 lottery” for those needing early medical freedom of expression. abortion provision. Services were withdrawn In September, the Investigatory Powers in one health trust as a consequence of the Tribunal ruled in favour of an activist, Kate lack of commissioning. In July, the Secretary Wilson, who had been deceived into a long- of State for Northern Ireland directed the term sexual relationship with an undercover Northern Ireland health department to make male police officer spying on her and her abortion services available by 31 March associates’ peaceful political activities. Kate 2022. Wilson had been subjected to inhuman and IMPUNITY degrading treatment, sex discrimination and violations of her rights to private and family In April, the Overseas Operations (Service life, freedom of expression, peaceful Personnel and Veterans) Act 2021 assembly and association. A public inquiry introduced restrictions on legal proceedings into the infiltration of social justice and related to overseas military operations. It environmental groups by undercover police imposed time limits for civil claims against continued to hear evidence in April and May, the Ministry of Defence and introduced a including from other women deceived into presumption against prosecution for offences sexual relationships. committed over five years ago, other than INHUMANE DETENTION CONDITIONS certain serious crimes. In February, Guantánamo Bay detainee In August, the UK National Preventive Mustafa al-Hawsawi filed a complaint before Mechanism issued a report regarding the Investigatory Powers Tribunal regarding persistent issues in places of detention in UK complicity in his torture and other ill- Scotland, including overcrowding and Amnesty International Report 2021/22 389