LONDON, September 15, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – While the British government unveiled on Thursday, September 15, new anti-terror plans, a special UN investigator vowed to scrutinize London's human rights record while fighting terrorism.

Home Secretary Charles Clarke proposed an extension of the time police have to detain terrorism suspects without charge to up to three months from two weeks, reported Reuters.

"I'm saying let's extend that 14 days. We are working on the basis that up to three months is the right time."

Clarke argued that the volume of cases, the need to trawl through electronic evidence and to work with overseas intelligence agencies meant police needed more than 14 days to bring charges.

He also wants new offences covering bookshops selling terrorist training guides and people attending terrorist training camps.

Despite resistance from security services, Clarke is exploring ways to allow the use of phone-tap evidence in court.

He outlined his plans in a letter to opposition parties, in a bid to secure a cross-party consensus before the plans go to parliament in October.

Since July's deadly bombings, which claimed the lives of 56 people, the centre-left government has introduced a string of new measures to tackle terrorism.

It issued guidelines of "unacceptable behavior" under which it can deport and ban Muslim scholars accused of fomenting, justifying and glorifying acts of terror and violence.

Clarke has also vowed to use his powers to deport and exclude foreigners engaging in behavior deemed to threaten security.

Civil rights campaigners say three months would be draconian compared to other countries and could backfire, reported Reuters.

"That in my view would be incredibly counterproductive to the work of the police and security services if they are to engage with the communities who may have intelligence," said Shami Chakrabarti, director of civil rights group Liberty.

The main opposition parties welcomed most of the proposals but expressed concern about the pre-charge detention period.

The government has already had to back down from a policy of detaining foreign suspects indefinitely without trial after it was ruled illegal last year by Britain's highest court.

"A situation where a country is preparing a vast number of counter-terrorism measures is ideal for my intervention," Scheinin said.

In a related development, UN special rapporteur Martin Scheinin said Britain is likely to be among the first countries to be scrutinized for the way it deals with human rights while fighting terrorism.

"A situation where a country is preparing a vast number of counter-terrorism measures is ideal for my intervention," he told Reuters.

"In that sense the UK situation is ideal. That is a very likely candidate for being on the list of first countries," said Scheinin, appointed in July by the UN Commission on Human Rights to help ensure that governments uphold human rights at the same time as fighting terrorism.

Part of his brief is to look into charges that some countries have targeted certain ethnic or religious groups or deprived suspects of legal and human rights.

British policemen were given orders to target Asians and blacks in their controversial stop-and-search campaigns.

A police spokesman defended the order: "We are saying to our officers, not all Asian people are terrorists but given we are looking at Islamic terrorists - if we were looking for Irish republican terrorists we would not be stopping Asian or black people."

Scheinin, a professor of international and constitutional law, has standing invitations to visit Britain and Turkey, and is considering further study of Australia and the US, among other countries.

But he said he was unlikely to ask to visit the US base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba where some 500 foreign terrorist suspects are held, many of them captured during the war in Afghanistan in 2001.

"That does not tie my hands in relation to Guantanamo Bay and I might then use other sources to comment on that situation," he said.

Scheinin was critical of "renditions" -- the controversial US practice of secretly transferring terrorist suspects between foreign states for interrogation -- but declined to discuss specific cases.

He said the UN Human Rights Commission had condemned the practice as a human rights violation since the 1970s.

"It is my understanding that this happens in the world, that people are abducted from one country, by another, to a third country, and it amounts to torture by proxy, in the sense that very often these people end up in countries which are known to practice torture," he said.

Renditions were first authorized by US President Ronald Reagan in 1986 and used by the Clinton administration to transfer drug lords and terrorists to the US or other countries for military or criminal trials.

US President George Bush has strongly defended such transfers as "vital to the nation's defense".