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UK Can Now Hold People Without Charge For 42 Days
the_leander writes "Prime Minister Gordon Brown has narrowly won a House of Commons vote on extending the maximum time police can hold terror suspects to 42 days. There is talk of compensation packages available for the falsely accused. The chances of you getting that money however are slim to none, lets not forget, this is the same country that charges prisoners who have been falsely accused for bed and boarding costs."
....as the Bill in question has only been passed by the House of Commons. It's got to go before the House of Lords yet. Many commentators think it is not going to do too well there.
The UK can't now hold people for 42 days without trial - the Bill still needs to pass the House of Lords to become law
That is right, for the time being the can only hold you for 28 days http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/7449678.stm. It is not as if the UK has the most cameras and the strictest terrorist laws of all of Europe. Nor is it the country that pressed for the European Human Rights Charter to not be part of the EU constitution. :-P
They also weren't apprehended on US soil, which is actually the operative difference.
If someone were picked up by the police or FBI in Chicago on a "terror" related charge, then the whole habeas corpus, right to a speedy trial thingy comes into play as usual. The difference with Guantanamo prisoners is they were all picked up on battlefields in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, et cetera. Whole 'nother ball game.
Sure, the poor sod was billed 12500 for bed and ledging...
But that was only subtracted from the 200k+ he got as compensation.
Which makes this a complete counterexample.
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
The bill defines how long you can hold someone without charging him with a crime. That's got nothing to do with how long, after he has been charged, it can take before he is tried.
As I understand it, the current limit is 28 days, so they're just tacking on an extra two weeks, and according to the BBC, they want the right on a "contingency basis" when the crime in question is particularly complicated and time-consuming to unravel, so they can figure out who's who and know whom to charge and whom to let go. An example they give is when there are international complications, e.g. the police need to get info from another country's police, immigration, or security services, which, of course, can take an annoyingly long time, since you have to rely on purely voluntary cooperation (no English judge can compel a French police caption, or a Saudi immigration agency, or the FBI).
In other words, as a general rule, the 28-day limit stays in effect, but in certain unusual circumstances -- e.g. something like the London bombing, evidence that some major operation has taken place, or is about to take place -- then the government can raise the 28-day limit to 42 days temporarily. Even if the limit is raised, a judge needs to sign off on applying it to any particular individual. Parlaiment can step in at any time after the limit is raised and reverse it. And, in any event, the raising expires after 60 days.
I dunno, when you look at the bill in detail, it seems rather, well, moderate. Not quite like the massive Armageddon / burning pile of civil liberties / return of the Gestapo, Inquisition, and the rack that lots of Chicken Littles seem to think it is. *shrug*
For the one or two outsiders who reads this, it's ROT-13 and reads:
In Soviet Russia, base 13 encrypts jokes.
Oh wait...am I now in violation with the DMCA?
There is also the fact that this is very likely to be in breach of EU human rights act.
Even if this does pass the Lords (unlikely), the European Courts will take interest and may very well overturn it. Remember that the British Courts & Parliment are answerable to Europe.
Anyone quoted by a reporter knows how little they understand
Don't believe what you read is the truth.
Really?
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Count the number of people who live in Detroit. Count the number of US soldiers in Iraq. Then go back to your fucking trailer and learn some maths.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
That's a slight mis-characterisation of how European law works. Since the Human Rights Act was passed the place this laws validity will be tested is the UK courts. Sure if their are arguments about the UK implementation of the HRA it could still go to the European Court but not on the case in question.
And besides the UK can always derogate from Europe on this if they want. They are still a sovereign country.
Okay, let's look at someone from your list:
"Adams was active in Sinn Féin at this time. In August 1971, internment was introduced in Northern Ireland under the Special Powers Act. Adams was interned in March 1972, on HMS Maidstone, but was released in June to take part in secret, but abortive talks in London.[4] The IRA negotiated a short-lived truce with the British and an IRA delegation met with the British Home Secretary, William Whitelaw. The delegation included Sean Mac Stiofain (Chief of Staff), Daithi O'Conaill, Seamus Twomey, Ivor Bell, Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams , and Myles Shevlin, a solicitor. The IRA insisted Adams be included in the meeting and he was released from internment to participate. Following the failure of the talks he played a central role in planning the bomb blitz on Belfast known as Bloody Friday.[4] He was re-arrested in July 1973 and interned at Long Kesh internment camp. After taking part in an IRA-organised escape attempt he was sentenced to a period of imprisonment." Held for a few months on a naval ship, then released to take part in talks. When he didn't get what he wanted from the talks he took part in planning an atrocity that killed 9 and injured over 130 - carefully designed so that people being evacuated from the first few bombs were directly in line for the second wave.
Hardly a shining example of a humanitarian. And 3-4 months in a brig hardly compares to Guantanamo Bay. As he was held on a British Naval vessel he was subject to British law, as opposed to being parcelled onto another nation's soil to avoid the arresting nation's laws...
'Don't worry' said the trees when they saw the axe coming, 'The handle is one of us.'
Er, even the article states that his £252k compensation was reduced, on audit, by £12.5k to cover the cost of keeping him for three years - and that in itself is a sum that works out at about what his SSP entitlement would have been over the period in which he was imprisoned, which is likely far less than the cost of actually imprisoning him (prisons being hellishly expensive to run). In short - he still walked away with £240k compensation. The implication that he somehow had to write a cheque himself is grossly misleading.
Moreover, the article is from the Daily "Hate" Mail, the newspaper that defines journalistic standards by contradiction; I'd more or less regard anything it prints as false by default, unless corroborated by a reliable source.
No, they're not - at least, not according to British law. As far as I'm aware (from a year and a half of a law degree), not even the ECtHR can force the British government to change the law - they can award damages against governments, and their opinion can have the effect of rendering such a law unenforceable, but that's all. Meanwhile, because of the longstanding doctrine of parliamentary supremacy, the British courts are estopped from examining the procedures of Parliament at all, despite HRA 1998; even if they find a law to be morally wrong, the most they can do directly is issue a "declaration of incompatibility" - which the government can counter by simply having a minister stand up in the Commons and say "No it isn't". (In fact, as all bills are required to be since HRA'98, this bill will have been declared by the government to be compatible with the ECHR; the onus will be on someone whose human rights have been damaged by it to prove that no such compatibility exists.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guildford_4
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birmingham_6
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Demetrius.
+ An opinion should be the result of thought, not a substitute for it. +
Shadow home secretary David Davis has resigned as an MP, and will run for re-election on the single issue of fighting the 42 day rule.
Details still emerging, BBC News has some details
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