Unconnected

The "anti-terrorism" bill is being discussed with an amendment to allow the detention of suspects without trial for 28 days, reduced from the original request of 90 days. The current detention period is 14 days unless you're a suspected homicidal maniac or accused of the most complex fraud, when it is 4 days. Before you read on you should know that a more interesting discussion of this bill is given by Liberty and Amnesty International, I am just speculating in comparison.
This detention period is the only time when a suspect can be questioned before trial, as soon as charges are made the suspect can only be questioned at their trial. Investigation and collection of evidence is allowed before during and after arrest and charge. Usually, if little or weak evidence is presented, a suspect will be interviewed in the hope that they incriminate themselves, which is why suspects will often stay silent. In serious cases, where a large amount of evidence has been gathered, suspects may also stay silent, knowing that nothing they say will alter the evidence and hope that a jury will find the evidence insufficient. It is in the intermediate cases that suspects will usually talk, believing they have a chance of refuting the evidence and so prevent a charge.
Now in a terrorism case one would hope that the police have a large amount of evidence before arrest and aren't just guessing. The police themselves say they need longer detention to process evidence. Now what is unsaid is that the evidence can be processed after charge, the only reason to want to do it before hand is to question the suspect about it. As I stated above it is quite unlikely that a suspect will "'fess up" on being presented with strong evidence, in fact the contrary may be true. If police are relying on a confession for their conviction the case is pretty weak.
So why I wonder, do the police need to detain for this long? The only answer I have is to apply "pressure" to the suspect; they hope to either gain a confession or incriminate someone else.
On what I hope is a separate note, the government has been trying to allow evidence produced under torture to be admitted in trials, the Law Lords are reviewing the law at the moment.
On what I hope is a separate note, the secret services have been known to arrest people fly them to countries that have no qualms about torture and then fly the home.
As I was saying, the only reason I can think of for this long detention period is to apply "pressure" to the client. I wonder if the government are so thrilled by the recent disarming of the IRA that they now believe that the miscarriages of justice brought about by confessions extracted under "pressure", was actually a good thing and an important part of the "war on terror". It has even been suggested that due to the lack of intelligence information it is best to take potential suspects off the streets for a while "just in case".
Whatever is really going on I am not impressed.