Counter-Terrorism Bill

No, I did not. The right hon. Lady can check the record, because I have it here. What I am saying is that that is an example. She set up the idea of the Crown Prosecution Service and the police making an application as a check on the system. The Crown Prosecution Service and the police had to approve what happened in that case under—she is quite right—extradition proposals. But after a few weeks, the FBI, which had sought the extradition, knew that the evidence it thought it had was without substance. The best way to deal with this issue is to quote from Lord Justice Hooper in the Court of Appeal, who completely exonerated Mr. Raissi. He called Mr. Raissi's continued detention without charge"““an abuse of process…a device to circumvent the rule of English law…brought for an ulterior motive…based on unsubstantiated assertions””." That is not what I say; it is what Lord Justice Hooper said in the court records. I am not suggesting—I do not think that anyone has suggested this—that British authorities deliberately detained an innocent man out of malice. Nobody is suggesting that. However, the risk of miscarriages of justice, with such devastating and counter-productive consequences, is magnified when we give the police excessive powers, which they will inevitably exercise under conditions of high public, political and media pressure, as will happen after a terrorist event. We should remember that injustice and repression are not always meted out by hard-faced men in jackboots. They can be the result of grey bureaucracies acting in haste under enormous pressure.