British Human Rights Watchdog Questions 42-day Terror Law

[Echo In Light]

Oddly interesting to discover that one of my primary political influences, Herbert Marcuse, is labeled as a "terrorist luminary."

British Human Rights Watchdog Questions 42-day Terror Law
by Alan Travis

The government’s own human rights watchdog threatened last night to launch a legal challenge to Labour’s plan to introduce a law that would let police detain terror suspects without charge for 42 days.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission says the key part of the counter-terrorism bill goes against human rights law and may breach the Race Relations Act.

As the home secretary, Jacqui Smith, renewed her appeal to Labour backbenchers to support the measure - amid growing international criticism - the EHRC prepared to brief MPs before the bill’s second reading in the Commons tomorrow. The commission makes clear it will mount a legal challenge if the 42-day limit wins parliamentary backing.

“If adopted, we may seek to use our legal powers to challenge the lawfulness of the provisions and to establish clear legal principles on the use of pre-trial detention,” it says in a briefing note to MPs.

The threat of a legal challenge from the EHRC, which has powers to take judicial review on legislation it considers may be in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights, is another setback to a government determined to increase the time terrorism suspects can be held without charge from 28 to 42 days.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Noam Chomsky and the American Civil Liberties Union have led an international outcry against the plan, which is opposed at home by the Tories and Liberal Democrats.

The government receives a further blow today when Lord Dear, the former chief inspector of constabulary, says a change in law would be a “propaganda coup” for al-Qaida. In a Guardian article, Dear writes that every chief constable he has spoken to regards the change as unnecessary.

Dear writes: “Make no mistake, extending pre-charge detention would most certainly be a propaganda coup for al-Qaida and its ilk. When I was an undergraduate reading law at university in the 60s, every self-respecting student had a poster of Che Guevara on their wall and knew something of the writings of {Herbert} Marcuse. Both of those terrorist luminaries said repeatedly that the best course for a terrorist was to provoke a government to overreact to a threat by eroding civil liberties, increasing executive powers and diminishing due process by the denial of justice.”

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/03/31/7991/

"Terrorist luminary websites:"
http://igw.tuwien.ac.at/christian/marcuse/odm.html

http://www.marcuse.org/herbert/

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5311625903124176509&q=herbert+marcuse&total=12&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0