Treat terrorism as an ordinary crime

On the other hand...

The government today faced a barrage of criticism after police released without charge the remaining 11 suspects arrested a fortnight ago in the north-west of England over an alleged terror plot.

The last two men to be released joined nine others given their freedom last night and one freed on 11 April.

Opposition parties, human rights lawyers and Muslim groups accused the government of mistreating the suspects and botching the anti-terror operation.

The shadow security minister Baroness Neville-Jones said: "It is very worrying that, following an investigation based on strong intelligence into what the prime minister described as a serious terrorist plot, the police have not been able to present sufficient evidence to the Crown Prosecution Service on which it could lay charges against any of the 12 arrested."

Comments

Dredd April 24, 2009 5:53 AM

There is a case recorded in the federal law books where this has already been done.

It is a published case where a sheriff and his deputies water boarded prisoners to exact confessions. They were all convicted of felonies by a jury. One of the deputies raised the Nuremberg defense, but it was rejected by the federal trial court and also by the federal appellate court.

Water boarding has been dealt with as an issue of plain vanilla crime.

The case is US v Lee, 744 F.2d 1124 (5th Cir., 1984).

The defense that My Lawyer Said I Could torture is also error.

Hugo Pottisch April 26, 2009 5:41 PM

Hmm. If we have evidence to be suspicious about these 11 - also known as being able to call them suspects - the law does allow us to keep them in custody. What is going on indeed? Or was the initial plan to torture them so that we have evidence that they might be real suspects? I don't get it?

goethean April 28, 2009 10:40 AM

You think it is unfortunate that they had to let people go when they had no evidence against them?

Presumably this applies to other people only, not to yourself.