Examination of Witnesses (Questions 120-139)
MR LIVIO
ZILLI, DR
ERIC METCALFE,
MR GARETH
CROSSMAN, MR
JAMES WELCH
AND MS
ALEXANDRA MARKS
31 OCTOBER 2005
Q120 Lord Judd: If I could revert
to my previous question, would you not feel therefore that a statement
by the Home Secretary, that he can think of no situation in the
world where it is possible to talk of any justification for terrorism
today, is unrealistic in the context of some real political situations
that exist in the world?
Dr Metcalfe: I think it is highly
unrealistic and I was surprised that the Home Secretary had made
that statement. I think you only have to look, say, as an extreme
example, at North Korea, one of the most totalitarian and draconian
societies on the face of the planet. To suggest that no-one in
the United Kingdom should be permitted to talk about armed resistance
to the North Korean regime in the absence of the international
community doing anything about it, that to talk about armed resistance
against the North Korean regime should be made a criminal offence
in this country, seems to me astounding. That is the most extreme
example. I think there are many situations around the world on
which reasonable people can disagree, of course, but you can legitimately
talk about the merits or the morality of political violence against
the state in situations where the countries involved are simply
not democratic, where the governments or the regimes are repressive.
Q121 Lord Judd: Would you go so far
as to say that provisions of the kind envisaged are quite dangerous
in terms of the resulting limitation on analysis of what is happening
politically in the world?
Dr Metcalfe: Profoundly. It is
a profound impoverishment of free speech in this country. Think
of how much of our political philosophy and political theory has
been born of discussions around the legitimacy of political violence
in general and then consider a law that prohibits such discussion.
The chilling effect is a very simple point, that for fear of breaching
this law people will not only say things which are contrary to
this law but are also liable to be contrary to this law. Because
it is so broadly defined it will inhibit a great many things that
ought to be discussed.
Mr Crossman: On Lord Lester's
point could I make one other observation, and that is to agree
with what he says. That is in the structure of the legislation
that we have. The proscription offence is in Part 2 of this Bill.
It is not a criminal offence in itself; it is a proscription.
Therefore you would not have the safeguards that are in place
for the prosecution to take place, so you would not need the agreement
of the DPP to proscribe. This is a decision of the Home Secretary.
It does not go through any criminal process. You can appeal against
proscription, although I must say that I have always thought that
the way in which you are going to appeal against an organisation
being proscribed and then having anything to do with an organisation
being a criminal offence, would be somewhat difficult. Given that
this is a decision of the Home Secretary rather than involving
due process of the court, I would say very much that proscription
offences are in some ways more concerning than the offences under
Part 1.
Q122 Mary Creagh: None of you considers
that the case has been made for the proposed extension of pre-charge
detention. In your evidence you said that more appropriate and
proportionate ways of meeting the police's concerns are available,
including by providing the police with additional resources, relaxing
the ban on the admissibility of intercept evidence and bringing
lesser charges while continuing to investigate more serious allegations.
I do not know how many of you were here last week to hear the
police and the Home Secretary both refute that quite emphatically,
particularly the issue of extra resources. You are also concerned
that the justifications relied on by the police apply equally
to other types of criminal investigation, and again last week
the police were very clear in their evidence about the distinction
they make between the need for these powers in terms of terrorism
but not in terms of serious organised crime or other crimes. Amnesty,
you make the additional point that judicial scrutiny of extensions
is simply a review of the reasons adduced by the police of the
need for such extension, and it is not onerous for the police
to convince the judiciary of such a need. Are any of the justifications
put forward by the police in support of extending the maximum
period to three months in your view genuine operational difficulties
faced by them when investigating international terrorism?
Mr Welch: We probably do accept
that there may be circumstances where the police feel they need
to act sooner against suspects because of the nature of the offences
that they are dealing with, but our view is that there are other
measures that could be introduced in order to try and deal with
this problem and ought to be before you come to any consideration
of extension of the 14-day time limit for detention of people
on suspicion of planning or committing terrorism offences. With
regard to those measures to which we think consideration ought
to be given, first, the use or admission in criminal proceedings
of intercept evidence. I do not think it is unreasonable to assume,
in the circumstance that, if the police have somebody under suspicion
and to feel constrained to take steps to arrest them at an early
stage, it is probably on the basis of intercept evidence. So if
intercept evidence could then be admissible on a subsequent criminal
charge (and that may well be acts preparatory to terrorism which
we have just been talking about), this problem is not as acute
as the police seem to be suggesting that it is. Therefore, first,
if you introduced intercept evidence into criminal proceedings
that would be something which we think would go a long way towards
dealing with the problems identified by the police. Secondly,
we think that the Police and Criminal Evidence Act Codes could
be amended to allow interviews to take place after charge. Currently
they are not but we accept that there may be certain types of
forensic evidence that it would take a while for the police to
get. That is pretty standard in criminal proceedings. I have been
a criminal practitioner and I know that you very often do not
get your forensic evidence until after your client has been committed
to the crown court and that may be two or three months even after
charge. We accept that there may be an argument for saying that,
where that new forensic evidence comes in and there are therefore
some legitimate questions which the police can put to a suspect,
there may well be justification for amending the law to allow
people to be questioned at that point. The third thing is the
obtaining of the keys to encrypted evidence, encryption being
one of the problems that the police highlight. There already is
a power under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act to compel
somebody to produce an encryption key and it is a criminal offence
to fail to do so, so if somebody is a suspect presumably they
are going to be the person who would have the key if a computer
has been seized from their address, so the proper authorities
can make the request for disclosure of the key and if it is not
produced that person commits a separate offence for which they
could be charged. The fourth thing which the Government might
want to consider is the possibility of introducing conditional
bail when somebody is released on police bail to return at a later
date. At the moment, when somebody has been arrested and the 24-hour
period has come to a close they are released pending further police
investigation to return at a future date. Under the present law
there is no possibility of any conditions being imposed on that
bail. We would not see a case for extending that to all criminal
offences but we could see that there might be a case for introducing
a system in relation to terrorism offences for somebody released
in those circumstances to come back at a later date to be subject
to quite stringent conditions. We would say that all those are
alternative measures which could go some way collectively, we
would say probably all the way, to deal with the problems highlighted
by the police.
Q123 Mary Creagh: It is very interesting
to hear those potential changes that you have suggested but what
would you say to the police evidence that, when they have just
made an arrest where there are 750 gigabytes of information, a
two-week period is simply not long enough? Similarly, if they
are going to go and get the SIM cards from the phone service providers
a two-week period is not long enough. Can you see any of those
as reasons which are in your view capable in principle of justifying
perhaps a shorter extension?
Mr Welch: There is no rule that
says the police have to have all their evidence in place at the
point when somebody is charged. What they have to do is have sufficient
evidence to charge someone and our view is that the types of measure
we have suggested are likely, in almost all if not all offences,
to allow the police to get sufficient evidence. We appreciate
how difficult a task the police face when there is so much evidence
to be gone through but unfortunately that is the nature of the
beast and that is why we say that resources are relevant here.
We accept that the threat we face now is real and that there may
well be good grounds for giving the police extra resources so
that when faced with these very difficult types of investigation
they do have the personal power to deal with them.
Q124 Mary Creagh: Could I turn to
Amnesty? I was very interested to read in your evidence that you
are worried about prolonged periods of pre-charge detention giving
a context for abusive practices such as confessions and the conditions
in which people would be held in police custody. It was very clear
from the police's evidence last week that people who were held
for more than two weeks would be held in a secure environment
with perhaps other remand prisoners, for example in a prison environment.
Their context was very much not about confession but more about
co-operation where people might over a period of time co-operate
with the police in order to face lesser charges. What do you say
to the police evidence on that?
Mr Zilli: I saw that and I thought
it was very telling. I think the premise for Amnesty is that international
human rights standards make ample provision for restrictions of
the right to liberty and therefore people can be held, for example,
in this country under terrorism legislation for up to 14 days
without charge or trial. If the question is, are there any justifications
that would warrant a further incursion into the right to liberty,
no, it would be a further incursion into the right to liberty
which is not permissible under human rights standards. You would
be looking at a derogation context in which the right to liberty
would clearly be violated because of the existence of a public
emergency threatening the life of the nation, or whatever the
requirement is in Article 15 of the Convention. I was interested
in the evidence given to you, particularly about the fact that
it was pointed out that people would be held as people on remand
on a very serious criminal charge, so they would be held as category
A, possibly in a special security unit at Belmarsh Prison, for
up to three months. That is not an incursion into the right to
liberty that it is possible to contemplate in a lawful manner
unless, as I said, there would be a derogation from the right
to liberty. I was also interested—and this has already been
pointed out—in the remarks made to you which to Amnesty
indicate that the person would be arrested on the basis of grounds
which would justify arrest and then the investigation would commence
at that point to go on to justify holding people for up to three
months when there clearly would not be enough to hold them on
a criminal charge. The standards, as I said, provide for ample
restrictions but at the end of the day they are quite exact and
there is a requirement to charge someone promptly. Fourteen days
I think is long enough.
Q125 Mary Creagh: Can I finally ask
the Law Society, Ms Marks, do you think Lord Falconer's proposal
that a more senior judge, such as a High Court judge, be given
the power to veto further pre-charge detention of a terrorist
suspect answers your concerns? Can I also ask if you are happy
with the fact that the police officer level that would be able
to apply for this extension is the office of superintendent?
Ms Marks: It would not entirely
answer our concerns and the Law Society, along with the other
panel members, is opposed to any extension of the period of pre-charge
detention, but if there is to be any judicial oversight at all
then we entirely agree with the police evidence which was given
to this committee last week, which was that there should be robust
judicial oversight and that there should be as much transparency
as is possible with this kind of offence. It is welcomed that
if there is to be judicial oversight then it should be with a
senior judge, a High Court judge, rather than a district judge.
That does not meet our concerns about the extension of pre-charge
detention, but it does go some way to allaying our concerns. However,
there is no proposal at all about the grounds on which this judicial
oversight is to be undertaken and we do have concerns that if
there is nothing on which the judge is required to make this decision
then it is merely a rubber-stamping exercise, or could be perceived
as such, and there would need to be some indication of the basis
on which that judicial oversight is to be conducted. There is
no indication of that at all at the moment. I would just like
to reinforce what has been said by Liberty about the period of
detention and in particular about PACE because it seems to the
Law Society that the existing Codes under the Police and Criminal
Evidence Act allow there to be further questioning once charges
have been laid in certain circumstances which would seem to apply
precisely to terrorist cases, for example, where it is necessary
to prevent or minimise harm or loss to some other person or to
the public, which seems to be right on point. There are other
situations as well, for example, to clear up ambiguities in previous
answers or to give the individual an opportunity to comment on
further information that has come to light. It seems to us that
the reluctance to charge at all for fear that that would prevent
further questioning of the suspects is somewhat misplaced even
under the existing Codes.
Q126 Mr Shepherd: The point was made
to us that the normal advice of a barrister or the counsel to
the accused is not to enter into any discussion with the police
or the authorities at that point. The advice of counsel would
be no co-operation. Is that a reasonable fear?
Ms Marks: I think that fear may
be somewhat overstated now, of course, that "no comment"
interviews can be commented upon adversely at trial, so I am afraid
I do think that that concern is overstated.
Mr Welch: Certainly the experience
in the case of Irish terrorism was that that was very much the
practice of people arrested. Whether that will be the case in
relation to a different type of terrorism we do not know. It is
going to depend on the advice of an individual solicitor on an
individual occasion, I should imagine.
Q127 Chairman: The evidence the police
gave last week anyway was that that was the practice. Can I put
a couple of additional points to you that have come out of a letter
dated 31 October from the Home Secretary today to the Liberal
Democrat spokesman on this point about lesser offences being charged?
There are two additional points which I would like you to comment
on. First, and I think this is a point for Mr Welch, you could
end up with having less protection for the subject if you charged
them with a lesser offence than any continued detention on the
basis that that lesser offence would not be subject to the judicial
oversight that the Bill now proposes, and we can argue about how
that should be done. The second point is that there is some integrity
about the suggestion that if you bring lesser charges effectively
as a ruse it is abusing the system because the real reason you
are bringing a lesser charge is not to deal with that charge there
and then but to use that as a holding charge whilst you go on
and continue your investigations somewhere else. You are effectively
abusing the system in that way.
Mr Welch: That is a type of abuse
that already happens. For somebody who has been a criminal practitioner
I know that I have had clients who have been charged with a lesser
offence.
Q128 Chairman: Do you not encourage
it by suggesting that—
Mr Welch: No, I am not trying
to encourage it but I do not think it is somehow dishonest as
the Home Secretary might appear to be suggesting. Secondly, there
is a form of judicial oversight because once somebody is charged,
of course, they have to be brought before a magistrates court
and it is then the magistrates that decide in relation to that
charge whether bail should be granted or not, so there is judicial
oversight that comes into play.
Q129 Chairman: Supposing bail is
refused.
Mr Welch: In which the person
ends up on remand in the way that a lot of people charged with
criminal offences end up being remanded in custody.
Q130 Chairman: But without the protection
provided by the Bill for the judicial oversight of continued detention?
Dr Metcalfe: If I may jump in
at this point, that is because you have a judge who has already
made the bail decision. That is the judicial guarantee. I do not
really understand how post-charge detention can be compared as
on a par with pre-charge detention where there has not yet been
any effective judicial oversight.
Ms Marks: Can I also make the
point that I think it is slightly misleading to describe it as
a ruse. It is actually a charge which is substantiated by the
evidence. The point that we have made repeatedly is that already
the police have to have reasonable grounds for making the arrest
and it is simply a question of how long it takes to substantiate
those reasonable grounds for suspicion to be able to lay a charge
and they will presumably do so on the basis of the slightly higher
evidential burden that is required to lay a charge and then a
further evidential burden for trial. I do not think to describe
it as a ruse is fair to the process.
Mr Welch: I may be wrong because
I am talking from memory now as it is a while since I practised
as a criminal solicitor, but I think it would also be the case
that if somebody were remanded into custody in a remand prison
and then the police wished to interview them again, they would
have to go to the magistrates and get them remanded into police
custody in order that they could be interviewed at a police station.
There would again at that stage be an element of judicial oversight
as well.
Q131 Chairman: That is what you are
saying would happen under this process.
Dr Metcalfe: Let us be absolutely
clear about it. If you have someone who is remanded in custody
that is because a judge has intervened and taken an independent
judicial decision. That is entirely in the hands of the court,
okay? Nothing of the kind of judicial oversight that has been
proposed in relation to this legislation allows the judge that
kind of decision. The question would be, if you are going to put
a judge in that kind of position to assess all the evidence, why
not charge them? If you are able to satisfy a judge that there
is a reasonable case to go forward, in essence why not charge
them?
Q132 Chairman: There may be a reasonable
case for a lesser offence like benefit fraud, for example, but
not for the more serious offences for which they were originally
held.
Dr Metcalfe: However, if the judge
takes the decision in relation to that and decides, even in relation
to the lesser offence, that bail should not be granted, then surely
the police have all the public protection concerns alleviated
at that point. If you have remanded the person in custody, as
I understand it the main justification put forward by the police
is met, their evidence-gathering can go forward and all the forensic
tests can come back as and when they like. The police concern
is that a dangerous suspect is no longer a threat to the public.
Q133 Chairman: There is also the
risk that if they are given bail they are then potentially a risk
to the public.
Dr Metcalfe: I am sorry, I do
not understand.
Q134 Chairman: If somebody is charged
with a lesser offence, like benefit fraud, and they are given
bail, then there is a risk to the public if they are suspected
of terrorism.
Mr Crossman: There are three grounds
for refusing people bail. One is that they are going to abscond,
next that they are going to commit further offences and last is
they might interfere with the course of justice through, for example,
interfering with witnesses. If a court decides that there is not
a significant risk of any of those things happening they will
grant bail or they might grant bail with conditions. If they decide
there is a risk of those things happening they will make a decision
to remand in custody. That is the process which we have in criminal
law. If the prosecution want to remand in custody, if they do
believe that one of those things will happen, they will make their
application to the court and the court will make their decision
on the basis of what they have heard. That is the nature of the
system.
Dr Metcalfe: If you said to a
judge, "This person has been arrested in relation to an ongoing
terrorist investigation and we are bringing them up on charges
in relation to credit card fraud that we suspect are related to
an ongoing terrorist investigation of a much larger nature",
I would be very surprised if a judge did not have regard to the
larger aspects of that investigation when taking a bail decision.
Q135 Lord Lester of Herne Hill: When
we were asking the Home Secretary about pre-charge and post-charge
detention, he said from the point of view of the bloke being detained
it does not make much difference. This was in the context of continental
countries which do not allow more than a few days' pre-charge
detention. He was saying, "But they can bang them up for
three or four years before trial so what is the difference?".
Can you try to explain to me, because I am not a criminal practitioner,
what is the essential difference between pre-charge and post-charge
detention in terms of safeguards?
Dr Metcalfe: One safeguard that
I am aware of is that once you have been charged you can make
an application to the court to assess the evidence against you.
It is essentially like making a charge of no case to answer before
the trial is begun. Forgive me: I am a barrister but not a criminal
barrister and I cannot give you the technical term for it, but
I am aware from having discussed it with my criminal law colleague
that this is an available procedure, but generally speaking it
is not very effective because courts are unwilling, unless the
police have been able to show almost no evidence in relation to
someone who has been charged, to dismiss charges at that point
but there is a mechanism whereby you can, at least under the common
law, challenge the evidence against you. I am not certain what
the situation is in relation to continental law countries and
I think that is more a problem with the terrorism debate in general.
Q136 Mr Carswell: I have a couple
of points on unacceptable behaviours. Do any of you think that
the publication of a list of unacceptable behaviours is an improvement
on the way in which the Secretary of State's broad discretion
to exclude or deport has been exercised in the past?
Dr Metcalfe: In principle it should
have been. The Home Secretary's powers are extremely broad. Any
foreign national whose deportation would be conducive to the public
good he is able to deport, and therefore it would have been extremely
welcome to have a clarification of the grounds upon which he will
exclude. Case law over time has shown that he has adopted certain
policies, that is to say, where he has reason to believe that
a person is involved in criminal offences, but in fact what was
put forward based on the consultation and finally released in
August was incredibly disappointing. You had on the one hand,
by reference to activity of fomenting or inciting terrorism, things
which are already a criminal offence. It is not necessary for
the Home Secretary to bring forward new criteria which simply
say, "Where a person commits these criminal offences I will
deport them". One would have thought that he would have done
so anyway because he already has those powers in relation to public
order. Where he went beyond merely listing criminal offences,
however, he did so in such a way as to be very vague. He did not
specify whether the people were intentionally inciting terrorism
or merely misunderstood; he did not attempt to give any clarification
as to the kind of context in which their statements might be understood,
say, if someone was having that discussion as a teacher in a classroom
or writing a novel or a play. He quite simply had no regard to
the incredibly broad definition of terrorism which we have already
adverted to, both foreign and domestic. It is one thing if someone
is inciting acts of terrorism in the United Kingdom; that is fine,
but someone having a discussion about the rights and wrongs of
political violence in countries like Nepal or Sri Lanka could
just as easily be subject to deportation on the grounds that the
Home Secretary put forward.
Mr Crossman: The new grounds go
much further than much of the legislation that we have been talking
about, even the legislation in the draft Bill when we have had
discussions about glorification. The new grounds allow for justification
of terrorism. That is really a step down. I am not going to start
talking about the Cherie Blair/Jenny Tonge type of situation again
but really that is where we are at if we are talking about justification
of terrorism. There have been long discussions both in front of
the Home Affairs Committee and in front of this committee about
the types of activity which might be considered to fall into those
different categories. There is no right for non-British nationals
to remain in the United Kingdom. However, if we are going to be
removing people who are not conducive to the public good something
a bit more substantive than justification of terrorism, especially
with such an incredibly broad definition of terrorism that we
have, would be required. I would like to agree with Eric and say
that in this case with justification it is going far further than
anything else that we have been discussing previously.
Q137 Dr Harris: Further to that point,
and I see the gentleman from Amnesty wanted to come back, perhaps
not on this but the Chairman might wish to bring you in, as I
understand it, it is not just a plan to exclude or deport. There
is a proposal being put before us in the statute in respect of
the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Bill, which was called
new clause 4 and now is added to the Bill, which specifies in
relation to the list of unacceptable behaviours, though not in
the statute, that it will be the Government's policy or plan to
have the ability to deprive someone of their citizenship on the
basis of behaviour not conducive to the public good, lowering
that from a threshold of conduct seriously prejudicial to the
vital interests of the UK. I would be grateful if you could comment
on that, especially in relation to this point about the vagueness
of the terms.
Dr Metcalfe: In relation to deprivation
of citizenship, we are talking about one of the strongest penalties
which the law can apply. It might seem rather frivolous in relation
to someone who is banged up in prison but, if you think about
all the rights and privileges that come as a consequence of being
a citizen, to be deprived of one's citizenship is an extremely
harsh penalty. There is also a question about potential discrimination.
It is interesting that it would only apply to dual nationals.
Obviously there is no suggestion of someone who only has United
Kingdom citizenship being deprived of their nationality. As a
dual national myself I wonder why I should be subject to deprivation
of citizenship simply because I was not born in the United Kingdom
as opposed to someone who is. Leaving those points aside, yes,
I share all the concerns that I raised in relation to the deportation
or exclusion of a foreign national. Why should such vague grounds
be levelled at dual nationals? Why should they too be put into
the situation of uncertainty? It has a considerable chilling effect.
I just wanted to say as a dual national that if I say anything
that might go beyond the bounds of what the Home Secretary considers
to be good public discussion he may level deprivation of citizenship
charges against me on that basis.
Q138 Lord Campbell of Alloway: It
does not say this in question 27 but of course it arises directly
on that interesting contribution of Ms Alexandra Marks. I must
confess, yes, I do know a bit about criminal law. I used to prosecute
in my younger days for the Attorney General on my circuit, but
that was a long time ago. The question that I think arises in
criminal law at the basis of this is about Lord Carlile's view.
What is your view of Lord Carlile's recent recommendation that
the judicial safeguards during any extended period of pre-charge
detention for terrorism on suspicion should include an investigating
role for a security-cleared judge? This comes to your point, where
you were saying, and I was very interested in it, that there should
be a form of judicial oversight. That form, I assume, in your
mind would be a closed investigatory inquiry where submissions
are made before a security-cleared judge. You then said it leads
to this very interesting question, "Our concerns", I
think you said, "would be largely met [but not met] if that
were a High Court judge", and I wholly agree it would have
to be a High Court judge. What I am very interested in is, what
would meet your concerns? Supposing you have got this system that
you suggested and you have concerns. Could you explain those concerns
and how they could be met?
Ms Marks: Yes, I think I would
like to elaborate on my answer because the Law Society is not
opposed to judges being more proactive, if I can put it that way,
as regards case management but we do have very great concerns
about the judiciary becoming more involved in the investigation,
if that is what is being suggested. We think it is vital that
judges retain their independence and we think there is a great
danger if judges are drawn into the investigation, and if I seemed
to imply in my earlier answer that robust judicial oversight meant
that judges would be drawn into the investigation then I apologise
because that is not what we intend. We have to accept, of course,
that our legal system is quite different from that of many of
our continental cousins in Europe where there is a much more investigative
role for the judiciary and they are specifically trained for that
purpose. It is not just an issue of training. Our whole adversarial
system is quite different and we think there are enormous dangers
in adopting a sort of pick-and-mix approach of various continental
systems of criminal justice and saying, "We like this bit
and we are going to bolt it onto our existing criminal justice
system". What I had in mind was rather more, as my colleague
from JUSTICE was saying, that there should be a proper use of
the PACE codes because, as I indicated previously, it seems that
the PACE codes already allow further questioning in certain circumstances
which would seem to apply very clearly to these terrorist offences,
but the real point is that an individual knows what they have
been charged with and appears before a judge who decides what
is the appropriate step to take as to bail, and that was the point
that was made previously. There are already very clearly laid
down grounds for deciding whether bail is appropriate or not while
an investigation may be continuing; and I really just want to
reiterate the point that I made earlier that if there is to be
judicial oversight at all, then we believe that it should be at
an appropriately senior level, but that is not at all to suggest
that we think that an extension of either the judiciary's involvement
in the investigation is appropriate or that there should be an
extension in the period of pre-charge detention.
Q139 Lord Campbell of Alloway: I
see. You would not accept then what I assumed you had accepted,
and I was quite wrong in my assumption. You would not accept,
on this question of an extension of a period of detention, that
that could be done by a judge who was cleared for security?
Ms Marks: As I just said, I think
there are real dangers. I think it would have to be a very clear
procedure, and if it involved the judge being in any way involved
in the investigation, no, the Law Society would not support that.
What I had rather more in mind was that the grounds that were
brought before the judge for the continuing pre-charge detention
would have to be very clearly stated. There would have to be a
very good reason why charges could not have been brought already
or, if there was particular evidence that was being pursued and
was not available for some very good reason, was not resource
related, for example awaiting a response from international authorities,
something of that nature.
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