British Prime Minister Tony Blair is expected to be forced into a humiliating climbdown this week over his plans to detain terrorist suspects without charge for up to 90 days, despite the near unanimous backing of the police in the UK and the British general public.
In a letter to the Guardian, the chief constable of Greater Manchester and the senior member of the police terrorism committee, Michael Todd, bluntly warns that it is vital that their view is heard about the need for greater powers of detention of terror suspects.
Todd writes: "We have given that professional advice on one basis and one basis only, that these were the changes that professionals dir-ectly involved in the fight against terrorism felt were necessary to protect the people of this country from attack."
"That is the view not only of [London's] Metropolitan police, but of chief constables across the country and the terrorism committee that represents them," he writes.
His letter is unlikely to change enough backbenchers' minds for Blair to win a Commons vote tom-orrow, but it does pose questions for the Conservative leadership amid signs that some senior Tories feel they have been dragged into siding wholesale with civil liberties groups and against the security forces.
Blair -- who would hold his monthly press conference yesterday and address his critics in the parliamentary party last night -- remains strongly committed to the 90 days, claiming opponents of the reform are being "dangerously complacent" about the terrorist threat.
Home Secretary Charles Clarke, will also meet backbenchers as well as holding talks with opposition parties on a likely compromise of 28 days, described on Sunday as the "absolute outer limit of what is acceptable" by the shadow attorney general, Dominic Grieve.
A YouGov poll for Sky News shows overwhelming popular support for the government's position, with 72 percent believing the maximum detention time should be extended to 90 days. Of those, 41 percent said that it should be granted only with the approval of a senior judge. The government has already said extension should be authorized by a senior judge with appeal to the high court.
The poll found that 16 percent backed a proposal by rebel Labour members of parliament (MPs) to extend the current limit to 28 days.
The lord chancellor, Lord Falconer, indicated however that the government would have to give ground.
Former Cabinet minister Frank Dobson warned of a breakdown in trust inside the parliamentary party if Clarke and the whips reneged on their commitment last week to back down over the issue.
TIT-FOR-TAT: The arrest of Filipinos that Manila said were in China as part of a scholarship program follows the Philippines’ detention of at least a dozen Chinese The Philippines yesterday expressed alarm over the arrest of three Filipinos in China on suspicion of espionage, saying they were ordinary citizens and the arrests could be retaliation for Manila’s crackdown against alleged Chinese spies. Chinese authorities arrested the Filipinos and accused them of working for the Philippine National Security Council to gather classified information on its military, the state-run China Daily reported earlier this week, citing state security officials. It said the three had confessed to the crime. The National Security Council disputed Beijing’s accusations, saying the three were former recipients of a government scholarship program created under an agreement between the
Sitting around a wrestling ring, churchgoers roared as local hero Billy O’Keeffe body-slammed a fighter named Disciple. Beneath stained-glass windows, they whooped and cheered as burly, tattooed wresters tumbled into the aisle during a six-man tag-team battle. This is Wrestling Church, which brings blood, sweat and tears — mostly sweat — to St Peter’s Anglican church in the northern England town of Shipley. It is the creation of Gareth Thompson, a charismatic 37-year-old who said he was saved by pro wrestling and Jesus — and wants others to have the same experience. The outsized characters and scripted morality battles of pro wrestling fit
ACCESS DISPUTE: The blast struck a house, and set cars and tractors alight, with the fires wrecking several other structures and cutting electricity An explosion killed at least five people, including a pregnant woman and a one-year-old, during a standoff between rival groups of gold miners early on Thursday in northwestern Bolivia, police said, a rare instance of a territorial dispute between the nation’s mining cooperatives turning fatal. The blast thundered through the Yani mining camp as two rival mining groups disputed access to the gold mine near the mountain town of Sorata, about 150km northwest of the country’s administrative capital of La Paz, said Colonel Gunther Agudo, a local police officer. Several gold deposits straddle the remote area. Agudo had initially reported six people killed,
SUSPICION: Junta leader Min Aung Hlaing returned to protests after attending a summit at which he promised to hold ‘free and fair’ elections, which critics derided as a sham The death toll from a major earthquake in Myanmar has risen to more than 3,300, state media said yesterday, as the UN aid chief made a renewed call for the world to help the disaster-struck nation. The quake on Friday last week flattened buildings and destroyed infrastructure across the country, resulting in 3,354 deaths and 4,508 people injured, with 220 others missing, new figures published by state media showed. More than one week after the disaster, many people in the country are still without shelter, either forced to sleep outdoors because their homes were destroyed or wary of further collapses. A UN estimate
RSS