On 15 September Home Secretary Charles Clarke published a new draft Terrorism Bill. Following the bomb attacks on London on 7 July Clarke and Tony Blair had announced their intention to bring forward planned legislation to extend powers to prosecute anyone guilty of ‘preparation’ for or ‘incitement’ to terrorism. The new Bill goes further, adding a new offence of ‘glorifying terrorism’ and extending the period of time for which terrorist suspects can be detained by police without charge from 14 days to three months. This is the effective reintroduction of internment, which was used against the Irish community in the 1970s.
The main measures in the new Bill are:
• ‘preparation of terrorist acts’ punishable by a maximum of life imprisonment;
• ‘encouraging terrorism’ by indirect incitement, carrying a prison sentence of up to seven years;
• ‘glorifying terrorism’ – punishable by up to five years imprisonment;
• providing or undertaking any kind of ‘terrorist training’ in any country, or knowingly attending a place where such training is taking place, punishable by up to 10 years’ imprisonment;
• ‘disseminating terrorist publications’, applicable to anyone who ‘gives sells or lends’ such material, whether on paper or online – maximum sentence seven years;
• extension to list of banned groups from those ‘directly involved in terrorism’ to those who ‘glorify, exalt or celebrate’ terrorist acts. Hizb ut- Tahrir has already been named by Tony Blair as a target;
• continued bans on organisations which change their names
• extension of offence of criminal trespass to licensed civil nuclear sites;
• maximum period of detention of terrorist suspects extended from 14 days to up to three months.
‘Glorifying terrorism’
The controversial proposed offence of ‘glorifying terrorism’ has already caused the government to do some bizarre legal gymnastics. Under the Bill, a criminal offence would be committed by anyone who ‘publishes a statement or causes another to publish a statement on his behalf’ which ‘glorifies, exalts or celebrates the commission, preparation or instigation (whether in the past, future or generally) of acts of terrorism’.
However, no doubt following endless reminders that had the Terrorism Act 2000 been in force during an earlier period the ruling party in post-apartheid South Africa, the ANC, would have been banned in Britain, it will not be a crime to glorify an event that happened more than 20 years ago. Unless, that is, it features on a special list drawn up by the Home Secretary.
This hands the British Home Secretary unprecedented power to determine which historic struggles are considered acceptable and which cannot be spoken about in any terms other than condemnatory ones. Apparently bids have already been made to Clarke to ‘permit’ glorification of the French Revolution 1789 and the Easter Rising 1916, while he has indicated that the 2001 New York bombings and 2005 London ones will be certified in advance as never to be ‘glorifiable’.
The government also plans to provide for ‘terrorist supergrasses’ to receive sentence discounts of up to 60% for providing evidence about their comrades and is exploring ways to use security service phone-tap evidence in trials.
‘Opposition’ to the Bill
The draft Bill was made available several weeks ahead of the publication of the full Bill to allow for consultation with opposition parties. While neither the Conservative nor Liberal Democrat parties had so much as murmured against the earlier proposals, the new additions caused some controversy and will be the ground over which the parties ‘bargain’ in the coming weeks.
Tory shadow home secretary David Davis welcomed most of the measures but expressed concern about the plan for three months’ detention without charge while the Liberal Democrats’ Mark Oaten said that a ‘major rethink’ of the detention proposal and the glorification offence was needed to secure his party’s backing. Anxious to make clear that they are not ‘soft on terrorism’, the Liberal Democrats insisted that their opposition was practical and based on concerns over how the ‘glorification’ offence would be drafted and interpreted by the courts. Regarding the extension of detention without charge, their spokesman argued instead for more police resources to be made available to carry out investigations during the two-week period.
The plan to increase detention periods was denounced by Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, as ‘the very antithesis of justice’. This is the same Shami Chakrabarti who, the day after the London bombing, rushed to voice her ‘unequivocal respect and admiration for the leadership shown by the Home Secretary [who] signalled effective but proportionate responses to the threat, which distinguish between the innocent and the guilty’. So there is no likelihood that Liberty will actually mount any opposition. Liberty has also, bizarrely, campaigned for the admissibility of phone-tap evidence, on the grounds that this would mean the government could try those arrested on the basis of such ‘intelligence’, and would no longer need control orders or detention without trial.
Charles Clarke, whose apparent initial misgivings about extending the detention time limit as far as now proposed were widely ‘leaked’, is now certain to make some ‘concessions’ in relation to the most controversial aspects of the Bill. This will probably result in an extension to the current 14-day detention, but to a period that falls short of Clarke’s opening gambit of three months. We should remember that for many years under the draconian anti-Irish PTA pre-charge detention was restricted to seven days, and even then the European Court of Human Rights considered that this was unlawfully long without judicial scrutiny.
The ‘glorification’ charge is highly likely to upset the House of Lords, who have lately been far better guarantors of human rights than their elected counterparts. However, the whole ‘debate’ is a cynical charade, designed to insure that the remaining proposals pass into law without discussion. These include the outlawing of ‘indirect incitement’ to terrorism, which could ultimately prove every bit as much an attack on the democratic right to free speech as the ‘glorification’ of terrorism currently subject to discussion.
Nicki Jameson
FRFI 187 October / November 2005
