The British government is still determined to press ahead with plans for 42 day internment for “terrorist” suspects.
As I’ve pointed out, several times before, anti-terrorism laws have so far caught 0 terrorists but have been used to arrest, detain, harass and deny liberty and fundamental constitutional rights for many innocent people.
The Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, has proposed that the amount of time a “terrorist” suspect can be detained without charge be extended to 42 days from the current limit of 28 days. This would give us the rather dubious honour of being the only developed nation on the planet to allow its citizens to be detained without charge for more than 28 days. The law of that beacon of liberty and democracy, Zimbabwe, allows someone to be detained without charge for 9 days with a further 21 days allowed by Presidential decree. Most developed nations allow only 3 days of detention without charge – even France, which has suffered far more attacks than England, only allows 4 days and Greece, which has an active terrorist organisation inside its own borders carrying out intermittent terrorist attacks, allows only 6 days detention without trial … even for terrorists!
Current a “terrorist” suspect can be held for 28 days without charge. To get the extra 14 days, MPs would have to vote on a request for an extension by a chief constable and the Director of Public Prosecutions. The “terrorist” suspect would be held while MPs took a vote. MPs will have 30 days to make their decision. Do the maths.
Jacqui smith is going to give a briefing to Liebour MPs on Tuesday evening. Why just Liebour MPs? Don’t all MPs need to know why the Home Secretary believes that the state needs to be able to lock people up without charge for 6 weeks, especially when only 6 out of 71 responses to a Home Office consultation fully supported the plans?
Technorati Tags: Internment, Terrorism, Liebour
They’d’ve given up by now, were it not for the fact that it distracts from the debate on the EU consti-treaty…
I swear this government thinks that the book 1984 is a training manual rather than a work of fiction
Charlie, you’re probably right. Don’t forget the sleaze and fraud problems they’re having at the moment too.
Kev, I know what you mean. Do you remember that email that was doing the rounds a while ago about the estate of George Orwell sueing the British government for breach of copyright with 1984?
Got to disagree with Charlie in the strongest possible terms; there is no debate to detract from. Certainly not outside of the largely far-from-influential Witanagement/CEP world.
Aye, right. It’s not as if the main political parties, the trade unions, readers of the Telegraph, the Murdoch press, etc, etc, are getting worked up about it. It’s just us cranks, eh?