Brown unveils anti-terrorism strategy

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown on Wednesday defended his proposal to give police more time to question terrorism suspects before charging them, saying the increasing complexity of terrorism investigations demands new flexibility in the law.

The debate in Parliament over extending the 28-day limit on pre-charge detention came as Brown outlined counter-terrorism measures soon to take effect that are designed to batten down public buildings, beef up the border police and target extremism in schools and communities.

The government signaled this month that it was considering options to expand the police’s interrogation window. In addition, the measure under consideration would give authorities broader latitude to question suspects after charging them and to draw “adverse inferences” when a suspect relies in court on something he did not mention during questioning.

“Achieving a consensus on the circumstances in which it might be necessary to move beyond 28 days would be in the interests of the whole country,” Brown told lawmakers.

In his most comprehensive review of counter-terrorism measures since he took office in June, Brown outlined a number of measures now underway. They include: carrying out airport-style security screenings at some of Britain’s busiest train stations; installing new security barriers, vehicle exclusion zones and blast-resistant building materials to guard against car bombs; and increasing security spending by nearly a third to $3.5 billion a year by 2011.

The prime minister announced the establishment of a 25,000-member Border Agency, with the power to detain criminal suspects and coordinate the movement of people and goods into and out of the country.

Brown’s administration plans to hire 160 counter-terrorism advisors to help businesses learn how to increase vigilance at restaurants, theaters, hospitals and places of worship. The government also will seek new laws to control financing of terrorist operations and will appoint a senior judge and lead prosecutor to oversee terrorism cases.

The call to extend detention without charges has not yet been formally proposed but has already overshadowed many of the measures outlined Wednesday. It has raised concerns that Britain is undermining the values that it is seeking to protect against the threat of terrorism.

“The fact remains that if you do go beyond 28 days, whatever the realities of the situation, our enemies will brand it as internment,” Conservative Party lawmaker Patrick Mercer said as Brown unveiled his strategy in the House of Commons. “May I beg the prime minister to look at the lessons of history, and not walk into this ambush?”

Brown said he believed a law could be fashioned that protected the rights of suspects through regular judicial overview and reports to Parliament. But he said some additional flexibility was necessary at a time when police are confronted with unprecedented complexity in multinational terrorism cases.

In the case of a plot uncovered last year to carry liquid explosives on board transatlantic airliners, “the police had to deal with 400 separate computers and 8,000 discs, including compact discs and DVDs,” Brown said. “They had to deal with people with false identities and false passports who were operating from numerous addresses with numerous bank accounts. Sometimes it is difficult in the first instance to know exactly who has been arrested.”

Parliament in 2005 rejected a proposal by Brown’s predecessor, Tony Blair, to extend pre-charge detention to up to 90 days. Brown has not specified what limit he will propose, but he previously has mentioned a period of 56 days.

Brown rejected suggestions from some human rights groups that potentially dangerous terrorism suspects could be detained longer than 28 days in isolated cases by declaring emergency law.

“I do not believe that it would be a good thing for a terrorist group to be given the oxygen of publicity by us having to declare a state of emergency in order to investigate it,” he said.

Britain already has one of the longest pre-charge detention periods in the Western world. Though the U.S. holds terrorism suspects as enemy combatants for long periods without charge outside the normal judicial process at its military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, basic U.S. criminal law requires prosecutors in most cases to charge suspects within two days or release them.

Russia and Spain can hold suspects for up to five days, Turkey for 7 1/2 days, and Canada for one day, according to a report compiled by the London-based human rights group Liberty.

“How can our government and some of our police argue that the U.K. needs to hold people for over a month, when so many other countries manage with pre-charge detention periods of less than a week?” the report argues.

“Some states and some individuals seeking to radicalize Muslim youths might use the disparity to undermine the Britain’s claim to civility and moral authority. Other governments might see this as a green light to pass their own unjust and over-broad measures against those they consider a threat,” it says.

A total of 1,165 terrorism arrests have been made in Britain since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the U.S., but only 132 of those suspects have been charged solely with terrorism-related offenses, and 41 have been convicted under anti-terrorism laws, Liberty says in its report, citing statistics from the Home Office.

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kim.murphy@latimes.com