By IRNA,
London : The Joint Select Committee on Human Rights in the British parliament has added its voice Wednesday to the growing opposition to the government’s controversial plans to increase pr- charge detentions from 28 days to six weeks.
Extending the pre-charge detention limit for terrorism suspects to 42 days is “wholly unnecessary”, the cross-party group of MPs and peers said.
Committee chairman Andrew Dismore warned that the government had failed to produce any evidence to support the extension, which is due to be debated in a new terrorism bill this month.
“Human rights law itself imposes a duty on the state to protect people from terrorism. This can be done in a human rights compliant way as we have demonstrated,” Dismore said.
“Not only have we found no clear evidence of a need to go beyond the current 28 day maximum in the near future. We are astonished – and extremely disappointed – that the Government have failed even to consider our proposed alternative,” he said.
Press reports have suggested that the government is heading for defeat over the proposal because of the extent of opposition from Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs as well as among Labour rebels threatening to vote against the extension plans.
Attempts to extend pre-charge detentions to 90 days resulted in former prime minister Tony Blair suffering his first defeat in the House of Commons in 2005, when a comprise was agreed to increase the term from 14 days to its present 28 days.
Dismore said that he would be tabling amendments to the terrorism bill and to enable MPs to consider an alternative package of measures, which he said his committee believed would be more effective in protecting the public.
The alternative measures include ending the ban on granting bail in terror cases to enable police to continue their investigation of those deemed not to pose a risk to public safety and allowing post-charge questioning of suspects.