Sunday, November 06, 2005

Making strides

Good news from the U.K.: Tony Blair is in retreat over his attempt to pass a law allowing for individuals to be detained for 90 days without charges. And that seems to be in part a response to some prominent legal figures who have lent their support to the anti-detention side:
The retreat reflects the strength of feeling not only in the Commons, but within the legal establishment. Lord Woolf, who retired as Lord Chief Justice only a month ago, becomes the most senior judicial figure yet to criticise the measures today, warning of the gradual erosion of 'what is acceptable' in the effort to combat terrorism.

He spoke after chairing a London lecture at which Israel's chief justice, Aharon Barak, said judges must 'protect democracy both from terrorism and from the means the state wants to use to fight terrorism'.

Woolf agreed, adding in an unprecedented intervention: 'Every time you move the goalposts, you are accepting a different level of what is acceptable. That then becomes the new starting point, whereas before it was the last point. And that is the case with the length of time one can hold people in custody without charge.'

Friends of Lord Goldsmith, the Attorney-General, have also disclosed that he is not convinced of the 90-days case because he 'has not seen evidence that robustly supports this' - contradicting Blair.
It doesn't appear that many people are pressing to eliminate detention without charges entirely. Current UK law already allows for 14 days detention, and the article speculates that all sides will ultimately compromise on a 28-day period. Which is itself far longer than should be faced by an individual not subject to any reasonable criminal suspicion.

But at the very least, Blair's claims that the House of Commons should simply take his word as to the necessary period have fallen on deaf ears...leading to the possibility that the UK will set a positive example for the rest of the Western world in rediscovering the importance of civil rights in the face of unsupported state suspicion.

No comments:

Post a Comment