It was always obvious (wasn’t it?) that the government’s insistence on trying to extend detention of terrorist suspects beyond 28 days was political madness. Even if they do manage to get it through Parliament, the public won’t thank them, or […]

As was widely reported yesterday, Abu Qatada succeeded in his appeal against deportation yesterday. Here’s the judgment (he’s also known as Omar Othman). The Court of Appeal has reversed the ruling of the Special Immigration Appeals Commission as […]

The government’s Counter-Terrorism Bill got through second reading unopposed yesterday: the real action will come in votes on specific amendments at a later stage. You can find the Bill and explanatory notes to it, here, and here’s the […]

Last week the UK failed in its attempts to reopen and change the approach of the European Court of Human Rights to the deportation of terror suspects: in the case of Saadi v Italy, in which the […]

Regular readers will know I quite often disagree with with what David Pannick writes in the Times; I also find myself often agreeing with David Aaronovitch who writes in the same paper. Well, this week my reactions are

The Counter-Terrorism Bill has now been published, with explanatory notes. Clause 22 and Schedule 1 are what everyone’s been waiting for: the proposed extension of pre-charge detention beyond 28 days.

The idea under the amendments brought in […]

Well, since I last posted, Benazir Bhutto’s been assassinated; President Musharraf has asked for help from the British police; and elections have been postponed until February. What began in November as a constitutional law issue, which I posted on because […]

I stopped in my tracks the other day on Borough High Street when I saw a poster from Liberty telling me the UK detains terrorist suspects longer than anywhere in the western world. Not because I was shocked at […]

On The World At One yesterday (you can listen again for a while) Lord Falconer justified his conversion from pro-90 days Lord Chancellor to 28 days-and-no-further backbencher oddly forgotten by Peter Hain yesterday. To be fair, he […]

More bad news for Jacqui Smith, now it turns out that Lord Falconer is against extending detention for terrorist suspects beyond 28 days, joining the DPP, the former Attorney General and apparently even the serving Law Officers […]