Holding suspected terrorist longer is unnecessary

The British Parliament will start debating this week a law that proposes extending the time a terrorist suspect can be detained before he is charged from 28 to 42 days. Former Chief Constable Geoffrey Dear rejects this proposal. "At 28 days, our existing pre-charge detention limit is nearly four times that of most other common-law nations and European countries using the adversarial system. In the US, the land that has brought us such counter-productive policies as indefinite detention for 'enemy combatants' in Guantánamo, the maximum amount of time a suspect can be held is a mere 48 hours. Why then must Britain need 42 days - six weeks - to hold suspects before they are charged? Even those who say that the UK legal system is incomparable to European practices must question the scale of this discrepancy and our commitment to due process in difficult times."

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