CHANCING THEIR ARM*
Londoners pay twice for
the services they receive from the Metropolitan police, once through general
taxation and secondly through a proportion extracted from their Council Tax. In
exchange for paying the salaries of Plod & Co you might think a certain degree
of accountability could be demanded. On Sunday night the boyfriend of a whistle-blower was held and interrogated for 9 hours by the Met under
legislation designed to combat acts of terrorism. Enter the press in the form of Nick Cohen, who
has a few pertinent questions to ask on behalf of the general public. The
response was less than forthcoming:-
I
phoned the Met press office. You will need to read our statement before we can
answer your questions, a spokeswoman said. She emailed me the statement. True
to form, it said nothing worth noting:
‘At
08:05 on Sunday 18 August 2013 a 28 year old man was detained at Heathrow Airport under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000.
He was not arrested.
He was subsequently released at17:00 .’
He was not arrested.
He was subsequently released at
That
was it. As I, like every other journalist on the story, had further questions,
I phoned back.
‘We’re
not saying anything else,’ a new flak-catcher said.
I
pointed out that the Miranda detention was now an international incident, and
that the Met looked as if it was turning into a political police force.
The
flak-catcher bridled. ‘We are not politicised,’ he insisted. ‘ We are operationally independent.’
‘ You
can’t just say that,’ I replied. ‘You have to prove it. You have to show you
are accountable.’
‘Ah,’
said the flak-catcher. ‘We are legally accountable. But we are not accountable
to the media.’[1]
The actions of the
Metropolitan police are, to say the least, interesting here. There is currently
legislation going through Parliament enjoying a fair wind that will place some
curbs, albeit limited, on the particular schedule used here, most importantly a
reduction in the length of time a person can be held from 9 to 6 hours- Miranda was held for the maximum of 9
hours, this is exceptional. It is possible that the police in the knowledge
that this might be their last opportunity to fully use/abuse these powers and consequently
decide to go for the full Monty, under pressure from the Home Office themselves
under pressure from the US administration. In short they might as
well take a hit to get the US off their back.
As I write the this the
Home Office has just put out a statement justifying Miranda with vague, indeed
wild claims conflating Miranda’s detention with combating terrorism.
The Home Office and the Met must be fully held to account, and this time a slap on the wrist simply will not do. I hope, and it is possible, that the
The police must be forced
to answer the following questions:-
The
Terrorism Act of 2000, which the Met used against Miranda, states that terrorism involves ‘serious violence against a
person’ or ‘serious damage to property’. The police can also detain the alleged
terrorist because he or she ‘endangers a person’s life’, ‘poses a serious risk
to the health and safety of the public’ or threatens to interfere with ‘an
electronic system’.
Which
of these above offences did your officers suspect that Miranda might have been
about to commit? What reasonable grounds did they have for thinking he could
endanger lives or property? And, more to the point, which terrorist movement
did you believe Miranda was associated with?[2]
The Met are hoping this
will soon all blow over, everyone concerned with individual liberty in this
country, and this is not a left/right issue, must ensure that this is not the
case.
*Slang for attempting to get away with something, usually something disreputable .
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