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Review all anti terrorism laws Issue: 25
April 2010
All counter-terrorism laws passed since 11 September 2001 should be reviewed to see if they are still necessary, says a committee of MPs and peers. They questioned whether ministers could legitimately argue, nine years on, that a “public emergency threatening the life of the nation” remained. And they said the government’s “narrow” definition of what amounted to complicity in torture was “worrying”. The government says the threat from terrorism remains “real and serious”.
In its report, Parliament’s joint committee on human rights said it was pleased to see that ministers said a commitment to human rights “underpinned” counter-terrorism work. But it said “all too often” they were “squeezed out by the imperatives of national security and public safety”. It said the government should drop entirely its plan to extend the period terrorism suspects can be held without charge from 28 to 42 days. The plan was shelved in the face of opposition in the House of Lords but
remains as a draft bill, to be enacted if needed. The committee said the draft bill was “alarmingly broad”. The need for the current 28-day limit, extended from 14 days in 2005, should be revisited and bail should be considered “in principle” for some terrorist suspects, the committee said. It complained that the intelligence agencies’ insistence on control over the examination and transcription of intercept evidence - like phone taps - amounted to a “de facto veto” of efforts to see it used as evidence in Continued on Page 2