I&#39;m a professional cynic, but my heart&#39;s not in it.

Not exactly.
The point was not that the police could nick someone and then simply hold them for 90 days. They would have had to make a case to a judge each week to be able to hold them a further 7 days after the 14 I think it was.

At the risk of being made really unpopular, I think it's about time we woke up in this country to the fact that there's some nasty people out there who don't like us and want to kill us. Some of these people will actually try, and which is more important, supposed "human rights" of suspects, or stopping large numbers of people being killed in an attack?
Obviously 7/7 wasn't a big enough wake up call, perhaps because it had a relatively small body count. I wonder if something on the scale of 9/11 would do the trick, or maybe even bigger.

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I realise there are nutters out there quite prepared to blow us up; we've had it for years with the IRA - several people I know have been that close to being one of them.

What may be the problem is that the media is plastering the 90 day limit without actually explaining what that means.

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I realise there are nutters out there quite prepared to blow us up; we've had it for years with the IRA - several people I know have been that close to being one of them.
Including me.
The IRA were different. They didn't actually try to kill people (at least that wasn't the goal - they went for property damage), and thus the bodycounts from their attacks were relatively small. The current crop of terrorists are not so kind, they don't leave warnings and they attack at times guaranteed to cause loss of life (i.e. during the day). The similarities between the two groups stop at "try to achieve their goals through terrorism" and any further comparison is relatively pointless.

What may be the problem is that the media is plastering the 90 day limit without actually explaining what that means.
Indeed.
The media took this and blew it out of proportion. Just as they are now with this "revolt" against Blair in the aftermath. I think that the media need to get a bit of a slap on the wrists about this. Granted, the BBC did put the full proposal on their website, but they didn't exactly make a big thing about it. They also put it in the larger news bulletins. The others didn't even manage that as I recall.

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Yes they did, they telephoned bomb warnings and then blew up the place outside the shopping mall where all the people (who were there during the day) had been evacuated to.

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Which attack was that on out of interest?

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http://www.manchester2002-uk.com/buildings/bombing.html
Manchester - admittedly this was a breakaway group after the cease fire. It's also noteworthy that in the cases where warnings were given, they were often given without enough time to properly evacuate the building - within 10 minutes of an announcement and with no obvious fire to make them hurry, a public building will not be empty of people, it will contain half as many people in a heightened state of useless panic.

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Human rights of suspects are more important. What's the point defending our society if the attackers just say, look, what we've done has persuaded their government to make their society more restrictive, we should do it even more so they lock up without trial anybody who looks a little weird, then they will be just like us.

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Funny, in the way I would prefer to see our society, the human rights of the potential victims of an atrocity, or their families who would have to bury their loved ones, are far more important.

The reason that the police requested this (and yes it was them that asked for this, not the politicians suggesting it) is because investigating a terrorism case isn't as cut and dry as, say, an ordinary murder. Mostly because most cases happen after the fact whereas anti-terrorism is preferably done before the event. It also takes a lot longer to investigate - hence the proposed increase - and during this time if the suspect is free and is a member of a terrorist cell, then they have a really good chance of disappearing. If that person is locked up, they theoretically can't go anywhere. That's why they proposed it.
If the police are just locking someone up with no evidence to suggest why, then the weekly judicial review will tell them to release the subject.

It's not like the police were proposing to routinely round up all Muslims in an area and then hold them for 90 days while they screened them for terrorist links. This was for genuine suspects who very likely actually do have links to groups, or worse are actually planning an attack.

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Sorry, I will edit that to make it sound more civilised.

I didn't mean specifically more important than the families of the people who got blown up, I meant more important than the chance that potential bombers would succeed given the police powers that were in place before this bill was passed.

Where you posted the either/or question, I was going for the thing closest to my opinion, which is not either of the two extremes you posed.

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The trouble is, the extremes do seem to be getting forgotten (not necessarily by your-good-self, or anyone else here - I'm casting a generalisation here).
Sure not every potential bomber or attack is going to kill lots of people. But some will.
Now, the question comes, does the human rights of suspects who have been held with a good reason (i.e. the police believe that they're planning something or are aiding someone who is - bear in mind this will have to be proven before a judge every week before they can hold them too long), outweigh the human rights of the suspects potential victims if they are released and thus have an opportunity to carry out their plan?
Of course not.
But at what point is a suspect's rights more important than the victim's. At that point then yes, they should be released, and that's why there has to be a weekly review.
As you may have sussed, if there wasn't to have been a weekly review, I wouldn't have been nearly as vocal in my defence of this bill.

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Now I know about the weekly review, I am not so opposed to the bill, but I still don't agree with it. I ought to admit that I have a personal interest - my brother got arrested in the US for being a terrorist, because he had Games Workshop character sheets in his luggage.

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*blink* Character sheets are terrorist materials?

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rirekon.livejournal.com

Lists of units with associated weapons and equipment, probably plans for deployment too.
Personally if you're going to arrest someone for carrying anything GW related it should be for possession of offensive weapons... those D6 can really hurt!

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Good job he wasn't playing Squad leader or similar.

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They thought they were profiles of intended terrorist targets, despite saying "Race: Orc" and having descriptions of nonexistent weapons on them. They were also partially in my brother's writing, which is abnormally messy (dyspraxia) and which the US customs officials thought was a secret code.

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Oh dear; how long did they hold him up for?

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I could go and look, but that would involve reading my brother's journal until August or September last year and I'd rather clean my toenails out with a teaspoon.

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Ah righty, gotcha. But thanks :)

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They are if they're from GW :)

I've had guns pointed at me by armed police for suspected terrorism, it's fun, honest.

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You have? What were you up to, you dodgey character, rolling dice aggresively?

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I was putting in network cabling in an office.
I got machine guns pointed at me for my troubles.

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rirekon.livejournal.com

Holding people for 90 days is not a problem, what is a problem is that they can hold someone without reason.
We have the "Suspicion" charge in this country for a reason, if you're not willing to use that then you shouldn't arresting them.

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The suspicion charge probably wouldn't have got through the CPS for one. Also as I mentioned above, investigating potential crimes on the level of these is much more difficult than others hence why they wanted longer.

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rirekon.livejournal.com

If you're investigating someone to the point where you want to hold them, surely you've got enough evidence to arrest for "Suspicion of intent to cause trouble" or whatever?
It's the "without charge" bit which gets to me, you want to hold me longer than 24 hours you can give me a reason!
This new law allows them to hold you for stupid amounts of time without any reason or justification, and that is not acceptable on any level.

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