CHEERLEADERS FOR INTERNMENT

The government has announced plans to extend the period that terrorism suspects can be held without charge from 28 days to 42 days – the equivalent of a six-week prison sentence for someone only suspected (not convicted, not even charged) of planning or committing an act of terrorism. If passed, such a law would be the latest in a long, dark and dismal line of relentless New Labour attacks on our once-cherished civil liberties.

The move has been met with opposition from the Tories and the Liberal Democrats, criticism from the press and – thankfully – scepticism from the British public. So now, right on cue, the government’s media acolytes have been given the nod to start defending the indefensible, employing rhetorical red herrings and scare-crow arguments.

First out of the starting blocks was Blair biographer (hagiographer?) and New Labour cheerleader, John Rentoul in the Independent, who described the controversial 42-day proposal as “perfectly sensible” and drew attention to comments by Lord Carlile, the ‘independent’ reviewer of the government’s anti-terrorism legislation, decrying the use of the word “internment” to describe the 42-day upper limit.

Then, yesterday, New Labour apologist David Aaronovitch chose to devote his entire column in the Times to debunking the claim by human-rights group Liberty that Britain had, in effect, “the most draconian detention laws in the Western world”. Spain and Italy, claims Aaronovitch, are far worse.

Yet, conveniently, neither Aaronovitch nor Rentoul bother to address the substance of the arguments put forward by opponents of the 42-day proposal. For example, what about the sheer arbitrariness of the number 42? Why 42? Not 52? Or 38? Or 49? As columnist Seamas Milne has written in the Guardian:

“What started a generation ago as a two-day limit on detention without charge, as exists for American citizens in the US, was fixed at seven days in 2000; ratcheted up to 14 in 2003; raised again to 28 in 2006; and is now heading for two months of effective internment. The arbitrariness of this ratcheting-up is obvious: in spite of the fact that we're talking about the country's most basic civil liberties, it has clearly been a matter of think of a number and double it.”

And, since the pre-charge detention period was outrageously increased to 28 over a year ago, have the police had to hold any terror suspect for longer than 28 days? Have any of their investigations been undermined by the current 28-day upper limit? The answer, as the Home Office itself concedes, is no.

What do Aaronovitch and Rentoul have to say about all of this? Nothing. Not even 28 words.

In fact, while lazily focusing their rhetorical guns on the ‘usual suspects’ at campaigning organizations like Liberty, they choose to ignore substantive and widespread opposition to the proposed 42-day detention limit from the more credible likes of Sir Ken MacDonald QC, Director of Public Prosecutions and head of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS); Jonathan Evans, the head of the Security Service (MI5); the Home Affairs Select Committee; Lord Goldsmith, the former Attorney General; and – belatedly – Lord Falconer, the former Lord Chancellor and Justice Secretary.

Who should we trust on this? MI5 and the CPS, or Aaronovitch and Rentoul?