![Senior lawyer resigns from UK terror tribunal after House of Lords ruling](https://www.jurist.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/jurist-white-text.png)
[JURIST] A senior British barrister with high security clearance to represent detainees before the UK Special Immigration Appeals Commission which tries terror suspects said Sunday that he would resign following a House of Lords ruling Thursday which had found the British legislation on indefinite detention of foreign terror suspects to be unlawful. In the letter to the Mail on Sunday newspaper, Ian MacDonald QC described the law as "odious" and a "blot on the legal landscape", and said that "My role has been altered to provide a false legitimacy to indefinite detention without knowledge of the accusations being made and without any kind of criminal charge or trial." The Mail on Sunday has more. A lay member of SIAC, Brian Barder, similarly resigned in protest in January 2004, describing the Commission's powers as a "threat to our traditional liberties." Read a statement on his website here.