Moral ignorance on a staggering scale

[fpb]

David Davis MP appears to have been so disgusted by the notion of extending preventive jail from 28 to 42 days (an extra two weeks) that he resigns to fight a by-election over it.

He apparently did not consider that the law, or rather "law", that allows the hybridization of human and animal cells was not so serious. He made no such fuss then, when the immorality of Gordon Brown compassed most of those who heard of it with a shudder.

I hope this man is a posturing mountebank. Because if he is serious and means what he says, then his complete inability to distinguish moral issues is horrifying in a politician who claims to be Conservative. Not, of course, in the least surprising, but horrifying nevertheless.

Comments

[stigandnasty919.livejournal.com]

There are not many circumstances I can think off where there is evidence that someone is about to commit a serious terrorist crime, where there is not a crime which the Police can claim they have already committed.

Discussing a bombing with someone can be construed as conspiracy.

Gathering information likely to be of use to a terrorist is a specific crime. Incitement to racial or religious hatred laws can be used. This is perhaps, in practical terms, a distinction without a difference but is important none the less as true preventative detention is going to fall foul of the European Court of Human Rights.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

ON the other hand, there are plenty of which I can think. The arrest of a single terrorist or mafioso is never anything but one end of a vast chain of action and evidence-seeking that must, in the case of Muslim terrorists, reach into such unwelcoming areas as Yemen or Pakistan; the search for evidence practically never ends with the arrest of the suspect. Indeed, that is only the beginning; there is such a thing as interrogation, the search for contacts and accomplices, for probable further crimes (because few criminals act alone or commit only one crime at a time), and incidentally the protection of witnesses and evidence from tampering. Sending home a man who is properly suspected of being one of a group of killers can result in your witnesses vanishing or getting killed (a matter on which, until recently, the British authorities have been culpably careless). I know all these things because I grew up in a country where terrorism and organized crime were daily enemies; and I am sorry to have to say this, but you should understand them as well, for the same reason.

[stigandnasty919.livejournal.com]

I was really puzzled at this response. We are obviously talking at cross purposes. You seem to have assumed that I am criticising the changes. I'm not, not in this post at least.

What I was pointing out was a technical point about the act. That the measure does not allow the police to hold suspects purely to 'prevent' them from committing a crime in the future. In theory, at least, the Police must be questioning them about a crime that they suspect has already been committed.

In practice this is not a limitation, if there is a suspicion that someone is going to commit a terrorist crime in the future, there are practically no occasions where there is not a suspicion that a crime has already been committed. Conspiracy, Gathering of data useful to terrorism, Membership of an Illegal Organisation, these are the crimes used to fulfill the requirement for a reasonable suspicion. Once held, they can be questioned about anything else, including possible crimes they or others may committ in the future.

And, if they eventually come before a Judge,the Police have to show that they have a reasonable suspicion that these crimes have been committed. In impact the difference is purely technical in that this requirement brings the act within Human Rights Legislation.

I quite understand the problems with the prosecution of terrorism. I live in a country where witnesses, jurors and judges were murdered or intimidated. I know one person who was kidnapped on the final day of a trial on which her father was sitting as a member of the jury.

The reaction to the problem in Northern Ireland was the creation of Diplock courts, presided over by three judges, which I believe have only just disappeared, and the disaster that was internment without trial.

I really only have one major reservation about the act, that of the controls in place to prevent abuse of these powers by the Police. The first control is that the Home Secretary has to approve extended detainment. Do we trust any Home Secretary to act as a defender of human rights against abuse, or will their first thought be the headlines?

And secondly it seems excessive that a suspect has to wait 28 days to be brought before a judge and have the reasonableness of their detainment examined. Sensible controls, to protect the innocent are required.

If i'm honest, I have little regard for the human rights of people who carry out acts like the attack on the Twin Towers, the bombs on the London Underground or the attack on my own home town of Omagh - hopefully the last serious bomb in Northern Ireland. But there is a delicate balancing act to be performed to ensure that, wherever possible, innocent people are not held without charge for six weeks on the whim or through the malace of a Policeman.

Faced with the choice, if I believed that a measure that had led to me being held wrongly for six weeks, could have prevented the loss of life arising from the Omagh bombing, I know which option I would choose. In fact there really is no choice.

Like you I don't understand the revulsion against Identity Cards. I also never understood why Driving Licenses in the UK did not have to have photographs on them like the ones we used in NI. But I do understand the disquiet.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

The obvious thing to do would be to do what is done in Italy and, I suppose, other Code Napoleon countries: to bring the reasons for arrest to a judge at the moment of the arrest, and let the judge decide then if the arrest is justified, and then have the time necessary for investigation. Italian law also allows preventive carceration if the suspect is a seriously dangerous person, e.g. if we are talking about a chronic thug or repeat murderer. A judge has to decide at the beginning. There is also a practice of notifying people when they are being investigated (so-called "avvisi di garanzia" or guarantee warnings), again from the desks of judges. There is a whole class of judges which is dedicated to overseeing police investigations. Of couse the problem then is that judges and police can get too close to each other, but the notion of arrest without oversight, which is what people really dread about British preventive jail, is certainly worse.

What happened to the person who was abducted, and to the trial in which her father was involved?

[stigandnasty919.livejournal.com]

I suppose the 'guarantee warnings' are similar to the suspect status in Portugal that we have become familiar with in Portugal.

The girl who was abducted was placed in the boot (trunk) of a car and was able to make such a noise when the car was stopped in traffic that the kidnappers ran away when approached. I believe a retrial was required but it was a very long time ago - before Diplock courts, probably very early seventies.