International Law

David Mery gets an apology for his unlawful arrest after 4 years - it should have been 4 days at most

It has taken over 4 years for David Mery and his wife to receive an apology from the Police:

On 28th July 2005, I was unlawfully arrested at Southwark tube station when attempting to take the tube after work to meet my wife. Chief Superintendent Wayne Chance, Metropolitan Police Service Borough Commander for Southwark, has eventually apologised to my wife and I for their actions and the trauma it caused us:

I would like to apologise on behalf of the Metropolitan Police Service for the circumstances that arose on 28 July 2005 including your unlawful arrest, detention and search of your home. I appreciate this has had a deep and traumatic impact on your lives and I hope that the settlement in this case can bring some closure to this.

I shall ensure that the officers concerned are made aware of the impact of the events of that day and also the details of the settlement in this case.

We are happy to be able eventually to put this behind us.

More details of this saga: Metropolitan Police Service apologises for unlawful arrest -

4 days would have been too long for an innocent man to get an apology, and to have his tainted data records removed from the police computer systems.

Many other people who have been abused by the police and (in)justice system in this way, have not had the knowledge or persistence required to pursue his legitimate complaints as David has done.

This sort of stupid and unnecessary delay completely undoes any of the good work in the Prevent strand of the UK government's CONTEST counter terrorism strategy, and effectively hands the terrorists a victory, for free.

We know several people, holding key positions within the UK's Critical National Infrastructure who are much less likely to cooperate with the Police or the Intelligence Agencies etc. as a result of this case, and the counterproductive bureaucratic attitude it demonstrates.

If frontline military , intelligence and police officers are willing to their lives at risk to protect us from our enemies, then why cannot their senior commanders and political bosses swallow their pride, and make rapid, fulsome public apologies for the inevitable mistakes ?

Why can they not wipe the tainted database records of innocent people immediately ?

Full post as published by Spy Blog on September 26, 2009 (boomark / email).