This is an article about one man's treatment under Britain's new terrorism laws.

His conclusions about the experience? Fighting terrorism is a serious matter and needs to be tackled in a serious way - not through empty gimmicks sustained by fear-mongering and alarmist rhetoric. The real danger is that we are witnessing a slide from the essential purity of habeas corpus into a Britain where the innocent are detained until proven guilty.
www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/au...orism.civilliberties
This is one law that I hope will be thrown out by the Lords.

Even the security services don't support 42 days detention. It's a gimmick Gordie Broon introduced so he could play tough to the Daily Mail. The quicker the new law and the odious government which introduced it is thrown out the better. I never thought I'd see the day a Labour government had less respect for civil liberties than Margaret Thatcher.

Detention without trial was introduced in Northern Ireland during the early days of the Troubles. It ended up being the best recruiting campaign for the IRA that there ever was. A distant relative of mine was interned simply because he was an Irish language teacher.

Does Habeas Corpus apply in Scots Law, or is there a different Scots legal principle?

InfrequentAllele asked:Does Habeas Corpus apply in Scots Law, or is there a different Scots legal principle? Habeas Corpus does not apply in Scots Law as far as I can ascertain - but don't quote me on it as I'm no expert.
The writ of habeas corpus is unknown to Scots law, nor will it issue from English courts into Scotland. http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Habeas_Corpus
It appears that Habeas Corpus causes some confusion even amongst those with expert knowledge of Scots Law. See: http://www.law.ed.ac.uk/sln/blogentry.aspx?blogentryref=7524
and http://www.law.ed.ac.uk/sln/blogentry.aspx?blogentryref=7523
I agree with the point you make regarding the security services not wanting this. It has also been argued on several other forums I follow that if this is enacted it will be the best recruitment campaign ever run on behalf of Al Qaeda.

Once again, I am prepared to be soundly criticised for these views and yet, I am not convinced either way.

We have in this country groups of people who will without any conscience blow up other people. They live in our midst and live as one of us until they are ready to strike.

We must find a way to find these people and then either send them out of our country before they do damage such as they did in London and in Glasgow or scare them into not trying.

I take all the points made in this article and I am appalled at the treatment of this person but what is a sensible alternative. How do we stop them?

The points made in this article highlight my fears of putting a completely innocent person in prison. The subsequent loss of job, the time away from family, and the fear of the person and their family, the strain on a family of an innocent person.

This article leaves me with questions to be answered.

Other people have stayed in prison when charged and then found to be innocent why do they not merit the same sympathy.

Men in this country can sell every thing they own, get into debt to gain legal contact with their children and still go to jail for turning up with a legal court order to see their kids. Where is the sympathy for them? Not so long ago they were kept in the cells for 72 hours. My point in short why the sympathy for people from other countries and not for our own people.

If this man had indefinite leave to remain, has that been reversed?
Was he here illegally?
Is this person guilty and the police could not find the evidence they needed to convict?

Have the police picked on this person simply for reading the article about the training manual of terrorists? I find this a little hard to believe but if that is so it is not the way I would like our laws to be used.

How often has or will this 42 days ability be used, would the police need this time, in this case they managed the investigation in six days, but what if they needed information from abroad or needed forensic results. What if the police were sure of the guilt of this person, had the relevant proof and wanted the ability to stop them from warning the other members of their group?.

In the last discussion, I made the same points if your close relative had been killed in Glasgow how would you feel. If your close relative had been killed, or maimed, in London how would you feel. Would you feel less sympathy, would you feel “find these people and get them out of this country�?

Brenna1508 wrote:
InfrequentAllele asked:Does Habeas Corpus apply in Scots Law, or is there a different Scots legal principle? Habeas Corpus does not apply in Scots Law as far as I can ascertain - but don't quote me on it as I'm no expert.
The writ of habeas corpus is unknown to Scots law, nor will it issue from English courts into Scotland. http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Habeas_Corpus
It appears that Habeas Corpus causes some confusion even amongst those with expert knowledge of Scots Law. See: http://www.law.ed.ac.uk/sln/blogentry.aspx?blogentryref=7524
and http://www.law.ed.ac.uk/sln/blogentry.aspx?blogentryref=7523
I agree with the point you make regarding the security services not wanting this. It has also been argued on several other forums I follow that if this is enacted it will be the best recruitment campaign ever run on behalf of Al Qaeda.

The best recruitment tool, I cannot agree with that. if a person has Al Qaeda sympathies they have no place in this country. If they object to the 42 day detention law let them campaign against it as any other citizen in this country has a right to do.

Why 42 exactly? There is no evidence whatever that the length of time for which suspects are detained has any deterrent effect on those who are determined, if necessary, to commit suicide in carrying out terrorist acts. Nor does it increase the likelihood of catching the right people. Indeed, wasting more time in trying to build a case against the wrong people actually gives the guilty more time to get away. The truth of the matter is, that like much of our current anti-terrorist legislation, it derives from a New Labour administration which practises political triangulation, and hopes to win votes by appearing to be tougher than the Tories.

Hence the penalties for being in possession of so-called literature etc which may be related to terrorism. People can quite freely download, or indeed have emailed to them, such material, and unless you or I or anyone else has an encyclopedic list of what material is proscribed and what is not, we are all vulnerable to prosecution. Under this legislation a 16 year old can be found guilty of possession, whilst those who put such information on the Web and make it freely available are untouched.

It is not a question of extending preference to people according to what they are suspected of. Or of treating foreigners differently from anyone else.

It is a question of taking effective action to deal with the terrorist threat, and not whipping up an atmosphere of fear and panic, or demonising young people, in order to make political capital.

I regret that New Labour have failed to do the former whilst doing their best to secure their own party advantage.

Hi Robin

I am not sure why 42 days exactly. How will the police know they are chasing the right people or building a case against the wrong people if they don't try?
Labour would never gain a vote from me but I probably agree with the fact that they are trying through this policy, but if we gain the right length of time to do a full investigation that will not be a waste of time, much debate is needed.

I do not agree normally in making a law against reading any material, when we do we lose democracy, and free thinking, but I suppose the police are thinking more about who would want to read a document detailing how to make bombs. Would you, would I? I believe in allowing people to make up their own minds as to what material they want to read but what other information could you get from a document like that other than how to make bombs.

I have not yet read any suggestion worth reading to replace the dogged hard work that the police do to try to catch terrorists I suppose it is a bit like meeting people at a party could you pick out a murderer or a rapist. No terrorist will go about with a stamp on his or her head. There is no point in sitting back and pretending we do not have a problem, too many plots have been discovered. I agree public hysteria will not help but vigilance is necessary for safety.

The police already have as much time as they require for the conduct of terrorist investigations. It is already far longer than in any other country, including the USA, and in the opinion of top practitioners is quite sufficient. No, the truth is that the argument for extra time is solely based on New Labour seeking to appear 'toughest on terror' and to score party political points. This appears to have backfired spectacularly for them, however, since they could only get the first reading through the Commons with the support of the Democratic Unionists, and will be chucked out by the Lords.

Again, the police have no axe to grind against freedom of speech. But it is surely a mistake to argue that only people with sinister motives are likely to want to educate themselves about terrorism. Surely in this Internet age we all have a right, if not a duty, to inform ourselves about it, and not have to be beholden to the dribs and drabs of information fed to us for whatever reason by police or politicians, who are our servants and not our masters. If we believe in a free society, then let's practise it, and recognise that our security is in fact threatened not by too much information but by too little. It's only politicians and incompetent public officials who stand to gain by greater secrecy, not the rest of us.

Finally, the number of alleged plots discovered, and the number of rumoured terrorist threats (usually backed up with no evidence that we are ever allowed to see) bears absolutely no relationship to the number of convictions at the end of the day. And even many of those convictions turn out to be for possession of material downloaded from the Internet, or for stupid young people writing down their fantasies. Very few serious plots have been proven or intercepted, for all the time and effort spent, and all the public money.

Not because the hands of the police or the courts are tied in any way, but because politicians have consistently conspired for party advantage to create and maintain an atmosphere of distrust, fear and false alarm which was quite unknown in the days when, as you may have forgotten, the Tory cabinet themselves were the subject of a serious bomb attack by the IRA at Brighton.

At that time there was no suggestion whatever that somehow a police state would be desirable in order to defeat the IRA, and nor should there be now. And only in a police state are people not given due process and detained on suspicion for inordinate amounts of time without charge. We should not be going down this dangerous road - and certainly not in order to save New Labour's or Gordon Brown's future electoral prospects.

Terrorism suspects can already be detained without charge for up to 28 days. The security services, represented in the House of Lords by Dame Stella Rimington, former head of MI5, said that an extension of the 28 day time period to 42 days is not necessary. Many senior police officers are of the same opinion.

No other country detains suspects without charge for such a length of time. In Spain it's 5 days. In the USA it's only 2 days (if you're an American citizen). See -
www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk/issues/p...rative-law-study.pdf

So the real question raised by the proposed increase in length of detention is - Are the British security services so incompetent that, alone out of all the security services in the world, they need 42 days before amassing enough evidence to bring charges?

If the answer to that is 'yes', then what's required is better training and funding for the security services, and greater resources put into intelligence gathering, not further weakening of the fundamental principles that guarantee our civil liberties.

InfrequentAllele wrote:
Terrorism suspects can already be detained without charge for up to 28 days. The security services, represented in the House of Lords by Dame Stella Rimington, former head of MI5, said that an extension of the 28 day time period to 42 days is not necessary. Many senior police officers are of the same opinion.

No other country detains suspects without charge for such a length of time. In Spain it's 5 days. In the USA it's only 2 days (if you're an American citizen). See -
www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk/issues/p...rative-law-study.pdf


So, against the advice of the bodies who would actually use this legislation, a majority of the House of Commons push the bill through.

Have things come to such a state that the Cabinet would rather listen to the Daily Mail for policy?

Or am I just being cynical...

So the real question raised by the proposed increase in length of detention is - Are the British security services so incompetent that, alone out of all the security services in the world, they need 42 days before amassing enough evidence to bring charges?

If the answer to that is 'yes', then what's required is better training and funding for the security services, and greater resources put into intelligence gathering, not further weakening of the fundamental principles that guarantee our civil liberties.[/quote]

The trouble may be as Robin suggests we may not have all the information. I can understand that an issue such as how a terrorist is discovered and apprehended would be kept secret but it could be useful if we knew how many suspects are released through lack of evidence. It would be good to know if this is truly a problem. I see no reason why MPs could not be given all relevant information to allow them to make a decision.

I sometimes wonder if this issue is posturing.

The points by you above IA are good and I wonder if that issue has been considered. If the real panic is because suspects are freed through lack of evidence this may be why Gordy is so keen. Then if this were an issue, I would think the security services or the police would agree with the 42 days, it seems they do not.

I have no idea if incompetence or lack of training is a problem but the people at the head of our security departments should and they should be honest. Honesty in this matter may just stop innocent people being detained for 42 days.

We have no real idea why some people at the head of the Labour Party would want this, we can suspect it is a tool for Labour Party and Gordon Brown in particular to gain votes but from whom. It seems there is not a lot of support for this issue. What do they know that we don't?

According to this BBC story, between Sept 2001 and June 2007, 1228 people were detained under the Terrorism Act of whom 669 were freed without charge.

news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6902522.stm

There was also an article in yesterday's Guardian, about an MI5 study trying to identify what kind of person is most likely to become involved in terrorist activities. It reveals that over half of those involved in Islamist terrorist activities are British citizens, most of whom were born in the UK.

www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/aug/20/uksecurity.terrorism1

IA it would be interesting to break those figures down to produce the number for the post-Iraq invasion period. Would that be possible?

Lydia we debated this issue on a separate thread I recall and you and I disagree vehemently on the connection between "terrorist" activity, specifically the London bombings, and our illegal invasion of Iraq. I remain of the view that the facts suggest we simply cannot disregard that connection as it is highly relevant in all of this.

I am all for reducing terrorism across the planet but I would say those best placed to lead the way are western governments like ours and the US who killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi people when we invaded their country illegally. I would also say that their response, to hit London and Glasgow, was entirely understandable not to mention predictable. These people may not have our sophisticated selection of weaponry certainly, (let's be relieved about that eh?) but they nevertheless see their actions as a defence against crimes, war crimes, visited upon them, their countries and their people by us.

What has the west done? We have demonised the entire Muslim community and labelled them all "terrorists". Yet who were the initial terrorists? We were. We walked away from formal discussions at the UN and even defied International Law in order to participate in our own form of terrorism in Iraq. And let's not even start about our policy in the Middle East which allows the terrorist state that is Israel to terrorise at will thanks to US dollars arming them even with nuclear weapons while dictating to surrounding countries that it simply would not ALLOW them even to dream of possessing such things. Its called double standards and our country is up to its neck in them.

Improved intelligence? You mean better than the "sexed-up" type produced by the liars Blair and Campbell? Who of a sound mind in this country would ever trust "intelligence" produced by any government ever again after that debacle, designed to win support in the Commons for an illegal war?

To be able to take someone away for six weeks without any evidence whatsoever connecting them with terrorist activities is in my view an affront to democracy. Reports already in the public domain also suggest that the treatment of such people is deplorable and that the methods employed in obtaining information are highly questionable. The word torture was used. So are we going to say that's ok too?

I condemn utterly the existence of the abomination that is Guantanamo Bay and condemn equally any attempt by the UK to follow similar practices here. That is already happening and it is up to ordinary people to say NO to it. We need a complete end to the hypocrisy of governments, and Brown backed Blair over Iraq, who are the real terrorists. What shocks me more than anything is that so many people have forgotten how this all started and who kicked it all off. We did.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1045986...-s-DNA-database.html

This article does more to encourage your point of view IA I found it interesting

This shows not all police departments disagree with 42 days
www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2007/jul/15/humanrights.terrorism

It could be worse

www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23267278-421,00.html

www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article407101.ece

www.mhf.org.uk/information/news/?EntryId17=43195&p=116

A few statistics from this link

www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm2006.../text/70416w0111.htm

A written question to the Government

David Davis: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department (1) how many of the people who were detained without charge on suspicion of terrorist offences between 11 September 2001 and 31 December 2006 were held for (a) more than 10 days, (b) longer than 20 days and (c) 27 or 28 days; [129933]
(2) how many of the persons who were detained without charge on suspicion of terrorist offences between 11 September 2001 and 31 December 2006 were held for (a) more than 10 days, (b) longer than 20 days and (c) 27 or 28 days before a charge was brought against them. [129934]
John Reid: The maximum period of detention pre-charge was extended to 14 days on 20 January 2004 and subsequently up to 28 days with effect from 25 July 2006. The following table shows a breakdown of detention statistics compiled from police records covering the period 20 January 2004 to 31 December 2006.

16 Apr 2007 : Column 507W
Period of detention Number of persons detained Charged Released without charge
#10-20 days #55 #45 #10
#20-27 days #0 #0 #0
#27-28 days #6 #3 #3
#Total #61 #48 #13


Mr. Watson: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many incidents have been reported to the anti-terrorism hotline since its introduction; and if he will make a statement. [129185]
Mr. McNulty [holding answer 22 March 2007]: Records of the number of calls received by the hotline have been kept from 1 January 2004. The total number of calls until 31 March 2007 was 9,474.
Number of calls
#2004 #860
#2005 #(1)7,422
#2006 #929
#2007(2) #263
(1) This figure includes the period 7 July 2005 until 8 August 2005 during which time 6,468 calls were recorded. This was in the immediate aftermath of the terror attacks on London on 7 July 2005.
(2) 1 January 2007 to 31 March 2007.



Terrorism: Lancashire
Mr. Evans: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many people (a) arrested, (b) charged and (c) convicted under the Terrorism Act 2000 were from (i) Lancashire and (ii) Ribble Valley. [130427]
Mr. McNulty [holding answer 30 March 2007]: The Home Office does not collate statistics by geographical or force area. From 11 September 2001 to 31 December 2006 there have been a total of 1,166 arrests of which 1,126 arrests were made under the Terrorism Act 2000 and 40 arrests under legislation other than the Terrorism Act, where the investigation was conducted as a terrorist investigation.
Of the 1,166 arrests, 117 were charged with terrorism legislation offences only, 104 were charged with terrorism legislation offences and other criminal offences and 186 were charged under other legislation. Of those charged, 40 were convicted under the Terrorism Act 2000 and 180 convicted under other legislation.


I don'y know why the above tables have not copied well but the link is there

Back in April 2007 I came across a report from the EU giving details of all the terrorist attacks across the EU during 2006. There were 500 attacks, of which 1 was instigated by Islamic Militants.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/euro...,1518,476599,00.html
http://tinyurl.com/3ah36d
It makes very interesting reading!