Liberty: They bottled it

Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, comments on the government’s review of counter-terrorism laws:

“We welcome movement on stop and search, 28-day detention and council snooping, but when it comes to ending punishment without trial; the government appears to have bottled it. Spin and semantics aside, control orders are retained and rebranded, if in a slightly lower fat form. As before, the innocent may be punished without a fair hearing and the guilty will escape the full force of criminal law. This leaves a familiar bitter taste. Parliament must now decide whether the final flavour will be of progress, disappointment or downright betrayal.

“I have no doubt were a regime of restrictions against terrorist suspects to be linked to a continuing criminal investigation into their activities, many of the constitutional objections to such a regime would fall away. It is precisely because the present control order system stands apart from criminal due process that it attracts such criticism.”