The Future of Counter-terrorism and Human Rights - Justice

support for 90 days, however, the government was unable to point to a single case
where a suspect had been held to the then 14-day limit and then released without
charge – the kind of example that would at least indicate that the 14-day limit was as
problematic as claimed.
The strongest argument against pre-charge detention, however, is less practical than
structural: the police may only arrest an individual where they have reasonable
suspicion that the person has committed a criminal offence. By way of comparison,
‘reasonable suspicion’ is also the standard required under the ‘threshold test’
contained in the Code for Crown Prosecutors, which allows charges to be laid in
cases where ‘it would not be appropriate to release a suspect on bail after charge,
but the evidence to apply the Full Code Test is not yet available’. 100 In other words,
given the barely discernible differences between the standard of proof required for
arrest and that required for charging an individual under the threshold test, it is
impossible to see how any detention period in excess of a few days could be
justified. This, at least, is the case in virtually all other western countries, in which the
maximum period of pre-charge detention in terrorism cases rarely strays above three
days. 101
Indeed, the fact that the majority of those arrested in the UK on suspicion of
terrorism since 9/11 have been released without charge 102 tends to show that what
is at issue is not a gap between suspicion and proof but a lack of sound suspicion to
begin with. And since ‘reasonable suspicion’ alone is enough to justify such civil
measures as deportation or the application of control orders, the departure from the
well established safeguards of the criminal law – the blurring of suspicion and proof
– becomes even more disturbing.
However, nowhere are the absurdities of the government’s reliance on evidential
difficulties as justification for exceptional measures more apparent than in its
stubborn refusal to permit intercept evidence – evidence gained from lawful covert
interception of a suspect’s phone calls, emails, letters, faxes, etc – to be used in
court. Indeed, lifting the UK’s self-imposed ban on using intercepts was one of the
central recommendations of Lord Lloyd’s 1996 review of terrorism legislation.
Outside the UK, intercept evidence has been used to convict Al Qaeda cells in the
means that in some extremely complex cases, evidence gathering effectively begins post-arrest, giving rise to the
requirement for a longer period of pre-charge detention to enable that evidence gathering to take place, and for
high quality charging decisions to be made.’
100 Secs 6.2 and 6.3. Sec 6.5 of the Threshold Test allows a Crown Prosecutor to have regard to the evidence
available at the time; the likelihood and nature of further evidence being obtained; the reasonableness for believing
that evidence will become available; the time it will take to gather that evidence and the steps being taken to do so;
the impact the expected evidence will have on the case; and the charges that the evidence will support.
101 Maximum periods of pre-charge detention in other EU countries include France – 4 days; Germany – 2 days;
Spain – 5 days; Greece – 6 days (source: Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Counter-Terrorism Legislation and
Practice: A Survey of Selected Countries (October 2005). Maximum periods of pre-charge detention in other common
law countries include the US – 3 days; Canada – 3 days; New Zealand – 1 day.
102 See eg ‘Half of terror suspects released’, BBC News website, 17 July 2007.
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The Future of Counter-terrorism and Human Rights
A JUSTICE Futures paper