Jailhouse block?
The government is coming under increasing pressure after a report by human rights group Liberty has shown that Britain's 28-day limit on holding terror suspects uncharged is already longer than any other country with a comparable legal system.
Currently the government is looking to extend this 28-day period to 58. As the law stands now, after 48 hours a judicial warrant is required to keep a suspect detained without charge for a further 7 days, which can be extended in blocks of 7 days up to a maximum of 28 days. Even the U.S. with its strict anti-terror laws can only hold suspects uncharged for 48 hours.
Shami Chakrabarti , the director of Liberty suggested to BBC Radio 4 that an alternative would be to allow police to hold suspects on lesser charges, like possessing explosive material, rather than holding them uncharged while they try to work out the big picture.
Their argument is that extending the detention time is further infringing on people's human rights, making the UK look very hypocritical and could cost them the moral high ground when negotiating with other countries with poor human rights records. These seemingly draconian measures could also encourage Muslin extremists by undermining public trust in the government.
While the government argue that the extension is necessary to safeguard the British public from terrorism, there remains a number of skeptics, including shadow home secretary David Davis & Liberal Democrat leader candidate Nick Clegg, who think that these measures go too far.
As a young person it seems to me that these proposed new proposals are unacceptable without further evidence that they are needed. What happened to 'innocent until proven guilty?' If there is evidence of wrongdoing, then police should be able to charge them on the evidence that brought them in and then worry about working out the greater network if there is one. I don't see why terrorist suspects should be treated any differently from any other criminals: if we start setting different rules for different groups of suspects, what's to stop the government imposing these kind of confinements on whoever it deems public-enemy-du-jour. It seems to me that the government is trying to give itself powers to lock up whoever it likes without fear of reprisal.
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