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B
C
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5
The court held that it would not make the FCO a party to proceedings purely for the purpose of discovery. It was highly
unlikely that the FCO documents were any more probative than the
Hong Kong documents which the court had been permitted by HKG to
inspect. Public interest immunity had been properly claimed by means of two certificates, and the court would not inspect documents unless they were likely to contain material which would be of assistance to the applicant.
6 Mr Cahill's latest letters and enclosures essentially repeat the
arguments and alleged evidence produced by Osman's Counsel in the
seventh habeas corpus application. Mr Cahill has repeated his
allegations (in many cases offensively) in telephone conversations
with the press offices of the FCO, Home Office and No 10. All have
limited their responses to noting that such matters are for the
courts, and that we have no comment. In his latest exchange with
the FCO duty officer, Mr Cahill appears to have lost his
self-control.
D
Argument
7 Mr Cahill has no locus standi in the Osman case (although no
doubt he is in Osman's pay to whip up public concern on his behalf),
and we need not respond to allegations which have come before the
courts and been rejected. As Osman will almost certainly seek leave
to appeal to the House of Lords, we should not comment on the
substance of the case.
In
8 There is no reason to think that Mr Cahill will be any more
successful now than in the past in his attempts to make the Osman
case a matter of significant public or parliamentary interest. response to any enquiries, Ministers might draw on the attached background paper.
G W Hewitt
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