UK terror detention limit is longest of any democracy

As Brown's Labour government seek to extend the 28 day period that the police can hold terror suspects without charge, a study to be released tomorrow shows that British terror laws allow the British police to hold suspects for far longer than any other comparable democracy.

The survey, by the human rights organisation Liberty, was carried out by lawyers and academics in 15 countries. It shows 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.

Although police in these countries also face increasingly complex terror plots with growing international dimensions, their maximum periods for pre-charge detention remain as short as 48 hours in the US, five days in Spain and seven and a half days in Turkey.

The findings are released as MPs await the publication of a new counter-terrorism bill that will propose extending detention without charge beyond 28 days.

Now, Liberty's inclusion of the United States in this comparison is actually quite unfair, as we all know that persons are held at Guantanamo Bay for years without charge, but there is no reason to feel that bettering the human rights record of a country that has turned itself into an international pariah on this matter are any grounds for complacency.

The question remains as to why the UK feels it needs to hold suspects without charge for longer than Spain or Turkey.

And why is Jacqui Smith being so vague about what she sees as the correct amount of time that the police should be able to hold suspects without charge? We believe that she is looking for 56 days, although it is impossible to pin her down on this. And Gordon Brown is said to be "genuinely open-minded" on his preferred option.

If the Prime Minister is "genuinely open-minded" then why is this being presented as an urgent need? If this was a matter of import regarding the security of the UK and it's citizens one would expect the Prime Minster to have very strong opinions on the matter, one would certainly not expect him to be "genuinely open-minded" on the subject.

Shami Chakrabarti, the director of Liberty, said any extension of pre-charge detention would put Britain even further out of line with comparable democracies around the world: "The new prime minister is neither Tony nor Ian Blair. I have every hope that this new, damning evidence, alongside proportionate alternatives to lengthy pre-charge detention, will persuade him to think again."

She said the Liberty 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 to the world."

The human rights organisation acknowledged that comparisons with other common law systems such as in Canada, New Zealand and Australia were more straightforward than those with inquisitorial civil law systems such as France and Germany, but said it had asked legal experts in each country to identify the closest equivalent to pre-charge detention.

"We found that the closest equivalent to a charge must happen within a matter of days, not months or years as Sir Ian Blair and others have suggested," the Liberty study concludes.

What I find extraordinary about this discussion is that it takes place against a backdrop where the British police have never come up with a single case where detaining subjects without charge has prevented a single act of terrorism in this country, a country that has already used internment against the IRA with such hideous consequences.

And it's distressing to see the British Labour party behaving like the neo-cons, a group of people who lose an argument and then simply bring it back again a few months later as if the matter remains unresolved until they get what they want.

This matter has already been before the Commons when the government requested a draconian 90 day detention period and the government were soundly defeated and handed a 28 day detention period, something which many of us thought was far too long.

Now, they are approaching parliament again, this time refusing to even say how long they would like - which they do for no reason other than to avoid a humiliating defeat - and they are trying to extend it again, as if their first defeat has somehow been erased from all of our collective memories.

I suspect that Brown is doing this to portray Cameron as "weak on terrorism", but he's shooting himself in the foot. Cameron will oppose this legislation, if he has any sense, and he will come across as defending civil rights while a Labour government seeks to undermine them. It's an extraordinary place for a Labour government to find itself, but yet that is the ground that Brown and Jacqui Smith now occupy.

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Tags: Jacqui Smith, Gordon Brown, UK detention policy