‘[T]he obvious purpose of a 90-day detention law… [s]urely. was to put pressure on suspects and their associates to talk. The police would be able to pick up anyone they felt like and say: "Tell us all you know and we will let you go. Otherwise we'll hold you for three months and interrogate you all the time."
This observation is made in a letter to the editor that appears in today’s issue of the Daily Telegraph.
Given how weak were the ostensible reasons offered by the police as to why they needed power to detain suspects without trial for as many as 90 days, it seems the letter writer has hit on the real reason behind their request. Let us henceforth suppose it so.
The writer of the letter appears to think such powers excessive and unconscionable. He writes:
‘Maybe this would have helped them make some intelligence breakthroughs, maybe it would simply have generated false accusations against innocent people. Either way, it looked like a step toward Guantanamo-style torture.’
Behind all the hype and tripe served up by pundits and politicians in the last few days over this issue, it seems the real issue might be whether the current threat to national security from Islamist terror is so grave as to justify granting the authorities license to place such enormous harrowing psychological pressure on individuals in the hope thereby of extracting from them information that might enable them to prevent acts of terror.
All sides admitted there was no magic to the chosen figure of ninety days: but clearly the longer the period of detention the greater the pressure capable of being exerted.
Suppose that had the ninety day clause been passed yesterday, the extra pressure the extra sixty days would have allowed the police to exert might in the future make the critical difference in terms of their being able to extract from detainees vital information that enables them to prevent some future terror bombing that claims several hundred or thousand lives.
Would its being able to do be enough to justify this extra period of detention, even though some might be scarred for life by the experience of being detained under its terms, although entirely innocent and having been found in to possess no useful information at all?
How much suffering and psychological damage incurred by how many innocent detainees, if any, could be the morally justified price that needed to be paid to prevent the death of how many other innocent people?
These are agonising and unpleasant questions that present circumstances force us to face.
Some seem to feel the probability such an extension of police powers might be able to make a critical difference in terms of their ability to prevent terrorism is too low as to warrant being given them.
Frankly, if I knew for certain it would do so, I would have no compunction in wanting the police to be given them. But, of course, we don’t know it will do so, but we can be fairly certain that some innocent people will be made to go through hell if they are. So how are we to weigh up the balance of risks and potential benefits against each other.
Rather than all the waffle that was talked yesterday, should not such issues have been discussed by MPs yesterday?