The New Nation - Internet Edition

Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, may have succeeded in winning a crucial Commons vote to extend detentions without charge to 42 days, but at a cost of losing much prestige. The narrow margin of nine votes would have been reduced to just one if his four Muslim Labour MPs - Mohammed Sarwar, Khalid Mahmood, Sadiq Khan and Shahid Malik - had listened to the Muslim constituency.

While Mahmood and Malik were not available to comment on their motives, both Sarwar and Khan emphasised that they supported the 42 days pre-charge detention period as the Government offered compensation to innocent victims held for more than 28 days, and that the detention will be used only in exceptional circumstances with stringent judicial safeguards. One of the very few Muslim leaders to support the draconian measures was Khurshid Ahmed, head of the British Muslim Forum. The largest Muslim umbrella organization in the UK, the Muslim Council of Britain opposed the bill saying it would be "counterproductive, damage community relations and undermine the UK's moral authority around the world". The Board of Deputies for British Jews and the Community Security Trust (for the British Jews) in a submission to the Home Office last August, said that terror suspects should be detained for up to 56 days without being charged.

But the compensation argument holds little credence as even Home Secretary Jacqui Smith pointed out in a letter to Sarwar that anyone unlawfully detained is entitled to claim compensation under human rights law.

Former Shadow Home Secretary, David Davis, who resigned in disgust and accused the Government of buying the vote, suggested that the compensation offer was not only an admission that "innocent people will be locked up but it could be an incentive to waste police time." The police have previously been accused of carrying out 'fishing expeditions' targeting Muslims. Human rights lawyer Edward Fitzgerald QC also said the compensation proposal was "legal nonsense" as it will be seen as recognising the detentions which breach human rights. The Law Society also said that the offer did not alter its opposition to the unnecessary lengthening of the detention period, which they found no evidence to support. "It would be far better that the police are required to conduct an expeditious investigation so they can either bring a charge if they have the evidence to do so, or release the person," the Society's President, Andrew Holroyd, said.

The opposition to extending the pre-charge detention period was so overwhelming that it is difficult to understand the Government's insistence other than seeing it as a test of Brown's authority at a time when he has been under intense domestic pressure about his premiership. His predecessor Tony Blair suffered his only Commons defeat three years ago when trying to extend the period to 90 days and succeeding only in doubling it from 14 to 28. Since it became law, only six people have been detained for the full period, half of whom were freed without trial and none have been held more than 14 days in the last 12 months.

In an attempt to defend the increasing encroachment of anti-terror laws and the ever-expanding surveillance of Britain as a 'Big Brother Society,' Brown argued that they protected civil liberties. "It is our duty to write a new chapter in our country's story - one in which we both protect and promote our security and our liberty, two equally proud traditions," he said in a speech to the IPPR on June 17. In response, the Conservatives accused the Prime Minister of using rhetoric that was "undermined by his failure to learn the lessons of history." Without referring directly to the backlash against internment without trial in Northern Ireland, Shadow Home Secretary, Dominic Grieve, warned detention without charge for 42 days could "well be counter productive - acting as a recruiting sergeant for terrorists and drying up key sources of intelligence in the community."

The controversial extension is expected to be fiercely opposed in the House of Lords, after which it will come back to the Commons for a vote on proposed amendments. It can only be hoped that the Government finally concedes on the dangers of what has become more than a slippery slope of endless terror related laws eroding fundamental freedoms. And if not, we hope that more Labour MPs are prepared to stand up, including the four Muslim representatives, to declare that enough is enough and a new strategy, as repeatedly called for by The Muslim News, is needed.