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Now the Government must choose to drop the measure or seek a fresh vote when the Counter-Terror Bill returns to the House of Commons in November. Liberty’s “Charge or Release” campaign has condemned the measures as wrong in principle, unnecessary and counter-productive.
Liberty Director Shami Chakrabarti said:
“The Upper House has demonstrated why Britain is the oldest unbroken democracy on Earth. Common decency says we don’t lock people up for six weeks without charge. Common sense should tell the Government that when you’re in a hole and you’ve lost the argument- stop digging.”
Forty-two leading writers, including Philip Pullman, Monica Ali, Ali Smith, Julian Barnes and Ian Rankin, have joined Liberty in opposing 42 days pre-charge detention in an online calendar launched today at www.42writers.com



Liberty believes that extending pre-charge detention to 42 days is:
● Unnecessary: The Home Secretary has accepted that there has been no case to date where longer than 28 days’ detention has been needed. The Government’s only argument is that the powers might be needed in the future.
● Wrong in Principle: It would fly in the face of our basic democratic principles of justice, fairness and liberty to hold people for six weeks on the basis of police suspicion rather than hard evidence and without formally accusing them of any criminal offence. Innocent people would almost certainly be detained for long periods of time and then released without charge. Released after six weeks in police custody, the individual may well have lost their job, home and the trust of their community, friends and perhaps even family.
● Counterproductive: Unjust measures like these do not make us safer. The Home Office’s own Equality Impact Assessment states, ‘Muslim groups said that pre-charge detention may risk information being forthcoming from members of the community in the future.’
● Better Alternatives: Alternatives suggested by Liberty include: (A) allowing intercept evidence to be used in criminal trials so that the police can use existing surveillance material to support a charge; and (B) with judicial oversight, allowing the police to re-question suspects that have already been charged with an offence if new evidence comes to light suggesting that a more serious charge may be appropriate.
Liberty’s Charge or Release campaign has built a cross-party political and public campaign against the unnecessary and divisive policy, which would create injustice and undermine community relations. Liberty’s Charge or Release campaign, winner of the Public Affairs News’ Voluntary Sector Campaign of the Year in 2008, has the support of the Archbishop Desmond Tutu, political activist Noam Chomsky, Pakistan’s Human Rights Commissioner Asma Jahangir, designer Vivienne Westwood, former Chief Constable Geoffrey Dear, UNITE, UNISON, CWU, National Union of Journalists and the General Synod.
Contact: Jen Corlew on 0207 378 3656 or 0797 3 831 128
NOTES TO EDITORS:
1. “42 Writers for Liberty” was organised by Simon Prosser, Publishing Director of Hamish Hamilton; Anya Serota, Publishing Director of Canongate Books, and Hari Kunzru, author of the novels THE IMPRESSIONIST, TRANSMISSION and MY REVOLUTIONS. The full list of participating writers in “42 Writers for Liberty” are: Julian Barnes; Ian Rankin; Salley Vickers; Alain de Botton; Daljit Nagra;Tahmima Anam;A.L. Kennedy; Stella Duffy; Andrew O'Hagan;Joe Dunthorne; Mohsin Hamid; Craig Taylor; Kamila Shamsie; Nadeem Aslam;Linda Grant; Monica Ali; Rachel North; Nick Laird; Jackie Kay; Toby Litt; Maria Hyland; Philip Pullman; Hisham Matar; Jenny Diski; Michel Faber; Terence Blacker; Hari Kunzru; Anne Donovan; Lisa Appignenesi; Alexander Masters; David Mitchell; Jay Griffiths; Esther Freud; Darian Leader; Bernardine Evaristo; Ann Leslie; Hardeep Singh Kohli; Nikita Lalwani; Sadie Jones;Tom Hodgkinson; Shami Chakrabarti;Ali Smith The online calendar of their new short works is on www.42writers.com
2. On 30 September 2008, the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly’s Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights published a heavily critical report: “Proposed 42-day pre-charge detention in the United Kingdom” which can be found on http://assembly.coe.int
3. On 11 June 2008, the House of Commons voted 315-306 to extend pre-charge detention to 42 days as proposed in the Counter-Terror Bill.
4. Liberty has pointed out that existing laws and practices undermine the argument for extending pre-charge detention periods including:
● Threshold Test - The Director of Public Prosecutions (responsible for charging decisions) has said longer pre-charge detention is unnecessary because charging practice has recently changed to help the prosecution charge terror suspects earlier. Instead of requiring enough evidence to stand a “realistic prospect of conviction” (the full test) prosecutors can now charge suspects where there is enough evidence to support a “reasonable suspicion that the suspect has committed an offence” and where it is likely that additional evidence will soon be obtained (the threshold test). The DPP has said that the threshold test is now used frequently in terrorism cases – it was only just coming into use when pre-charge detention was considered in 2005. The Director of Public Prosecutions noted in March 2008 that the conviction rate in terror cases stands at 92 percent.
● Emergency measures in the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 could already be triggered in a genuine emergency in which the police are overwhelmed by multiple terror plots, allowing the Government to temporarily extend pre-charge detention subject to Parliamentary and judicial oversight. Safeguards offered by Government today offer far less protection than that offered in the Civil Contingencies Act.
5. In November 2007, Liberty released a comprehensive study of terrorist pre-charge detention powers in 15 countries, including the United States, Spain, Russia, France and Turkey. Liberty’s “International Charge or Release Study”, based on advice and assistance from lawyers and academics around the world, demonstrates that the existing 28-day limit already far exceeds equivalent limits in other comparable democracies. In countries that do not have the exact concept of “pre-charge detention”, like France and Germany, lawyers qualified in those jurisdictions have identified the closest equivalent. These findings have subsequently been supported by advice received from the head of research at the Italian parliament, the French chief of counter-terrorism prosecution as well as by the Council of Europe Commissioner on Human Rights who stated that 42 days “would be way out of line with equivalent detention limits elsewhere in Europe.”