I wish I could say I was making this up, but sadly, no.
Recently a woman in Scotland was arrested and questioned (in-terror-gated?) for four hours under the anti-terrorism laws. Her "crime?" Walking, instead of cycling, on a bike path that overlooked a harbor. She was told she'd be arrested again were she to be caught taking the shortcut to work.
Here's the story:
The next thing I knew, the harbour master had driven up behind me with a megaphone, saying, "You're trespassing, please turn back". It was totally ridiculous. I started laughing and kept on walking. Cyclists going past were also laughing.
But then two police cars roared up beside me and cut me off, like a scene from Starsky and Hutch, and officers told me I was being arrested under the Terrorism Act. The harbour master was waffling on and (saying that), because of September 11, I would be arrested and charged.
Ms Cameron, who said that at one stage one of the officers asked her to stop laughing, described the incident as "like a scene from the movie Erin Brockovich, with all the dock workers cheering me and telling me to give them hell". She said: "I was told that the cycle path was for cyclists only, as if walkers and not cyclists were the only ones likely to plant bombs. There are no signs anywhere saying there are to be no pedestrians. (via Curious Hamster)
She's just lucky she wasn't tortured.
Today the house of Lords is deciding whether to allow evidence obtained by torture. Is there really a question here? Not only is this the next step to allowing torture itself, but evidence obtained by torture is hardly reliable. As we've learned, many of the captured "prisoners" in Guantanamo and elsewhere are no more terrorists than I am, yet will confess to a variety of crimes under even the mildest of torture. I'd talk too, if you made me listen to some song like "Closing Time" for hours on end. I'd identify every single one of my accomplices with hardly any urging at all, unfortunately my accomplices are no more guilty of plotting terror than my dog.
Although I do know some dangerous types...people who foment dissent by occasionally walking on cycle paths.
