Is 90 days long enough?

Matt refers to a letter in the Evening Standard tonight:

Roy Jhuboo, of WC1, tells in a letter how the Police arrested him for photographing around Limehouse under the Terrorism Act. When he asked why, he was told that he “could be a terrorist on a reconnaissance mission planing to launch a rocket at Canary Wharf”. He adds “I am of dark-skinned appearance”.

This is an important story to remember whenever you hear someone like Lord Carlile say

“I believe I know of at least two or three cases in which a longer period of detention would have enabled the right people to be charged with and convicted of the right offences.

“If we don’t introduce law that enables that to happen then we are not introducing law of sufficient quality.”

Does he? Or is he aware of two or three cases where the circumstantial evidence suggested that individuals might be guilty, but hard evidence was sadly lacking. Of course, if it turns out simply to be a coincidence then such hard evidence will take much longer than 28 or even 90 days to turn up; it will never turn up, but after a while it will be in both the police and the presiding judge’s professional interest to let the investigation continue as long as possible. To do otherwise would be to admit that a mistake was made.

Nasty as it is to rat on people of your own party, but it should be pointed out that Lord Carlile when he was just plain Alex MP was one of the main forces behind the Lib Dem opposition to the national minimum wage, repeatedly warning that it would destroy the UK economy. Once he left to go to The Other Place, Lib Dem opposition to the measure fairly quickly evaporated.

Good to see we have such calm, dispassionate people independently reviewing our terror laws, isn’t it?

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