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Terror detentions longest in UK, says civil rights group

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

London, Nov 12, IRNA
UK-Terror Laws
Britain detains terror suspects without charge for far longer than other comparable countries, a study by Liberty civil rights group has found.

The study, which comes as the UK government is planning to further extend pre-charge detentions, showed the UK's existing 28-day limited was the highest in 15 countries surveyed by lawyers and academics.

It found that the four-week maximum in Britain outstrips limits in countries that have also suffered al-Qaida inspired terrorist attacks in recent years, including the United States, Spain and Turkey.

The UK government is arguing that the country faces increasingly complex terror plots with growing international dimensions to try to justify a further extension, but the limit was showed to be still as short as 48 hours in the US, five days in Spain and seven and a half days in Turkey.

Liberty director Shami Chakrabarti warned that any further extension of pre-charge detention, which was only doubled from 14 days last year, would put Britain even further out of line with comparable democracies around the world.

"The study explodes self-serving assertions about extended detention in inquisitorial Europe and other western democracies. It makes embarrassing reading for all of us in the land that gave Magna Carta (of basic rights) to the world," Chakrabarti said.

She said that she hoped the "damning evidence" would make Prime Minister Gordon Brown to think again, saying that he was neither like his predecessor Tony Blair or the current Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair, who is under pressure to resign.

The British government has been seeking a consensus with other parties to increase pre-charge detentions, possibly up to 56 days, but faces opposition similar to the previous Blair government, who suffered his only parliamentary defeat in 2005, when trying to extend the period to 90 days.

Liberty warned that any extension of pre-charge detention in Britain could have broader implications around the world and set an example to other governments to pass more draconian anti-terror laws.

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