JCHR report on Counter-Terrorism Policy and Human Rights: 42 days
In short, any extension to pre-charge detention is a serious interference with liberty that requires a compelling, evidence-based case, and the Committee does not accept that the Government has made such a case for extending pre-charge detention beyond the current limit of 28 days, for the following reasons:
i) it can find no clear evidence of likely need in the near future;
ii) alternatives to extension do enough, in combination, to protect the public and are much more proportionate;
iii) the proposed parliamentary mechanism would create a serious risk of prejudice to the fair trial of suspects;
iv) the existing judicial safeguards for extensions even up to 28 days are inadequate (paragraph 101)
The chorus of opposition is getting louder and louder now – the JCHR, HAC, Tories, Libdems, Goldsmith, Rimington, MacDonald, Woolf, Falconer…
The next step has got to be a show of popoular opposition to this draconian proposal. Amnesty’s supporting an e-petition on the Number 10 site at http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/notadaylonger
Add your name now – hopefully we can put enough pressure on the government to realise they’ll lose a vote on this.
Again I ask the question:
Despite all the opposition to its introduction, despite the overwhelming evidence to say it is not needed, despite the police saying they dont want or need it, why?
Why? following defeat after defeat is this government so determined to have pre-charge detention.
That is the real question. Do not be swayed by the if, buts and maybe’s of terrorism. The question is deeper, more ideological.
Why do they want detention?.
[...] two committees, the JCHR and HAC, both concluding that there is no case for extending the period of pre-charge detention. [...]
[...] the government’s safeguards are a sham that the parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights report, Counter-Terrorism Policy and Human Rights: 42 days, ruthlessly exposes. Indeed, the very idea [...]