Suicide bombing is a heinous crime, but law officers should remind the media that suspects have the right to a fair trial, writes James Welch

This is a scary time to be a Londoner. Travelling on the Underground is nerve-racking. I notice every police siren; all day I log on to news Web sites to check what's happening. At home in the evening I am an avid news watcher.


But, when I still the nerves, there is a lot to engage my legal mind. Foremost is the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes. Many were appalled that the police could operate a policy that would allow them to shoot someone in the head.


Lawyer that I am, I turn to article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The use of lethal force can be justified when absolutely necessary to defend others from unlawful violence.


Reluctantly, I can see the sense of this position, the choice of a lesser evil. Yet it seems a big step from accepting the theory to accepting that a man, panicked by being pursued by police officers, can be shot eight times. Article 2 lays a heavy responsibility on the state to investigate any death at the hands of state agents. The Independent Police Complaints Commission has already started an investigation. It is essential that it is both prompt and thorough. Not only must it establish the facts but it must scrutinise the guidance given to officers on the use of lethal force, their training, and the adequacy of the police's intelligence and information gathering.


Then there are the proposals for measures aimed at tackling the terrorist threat. The government has proposed three new offences: acts preparatory to terrorism, giving or receiving terrorist training and indirectly inciting acts of terrorism. The first two are unproblematic, although one wonders where the gap lies in the current criminal law that acting 'preparatory to terrorism' will fill. The third, indirect incitement, is more contentious. Incitement to commit an offence is already an offence at common law. Praising suicide bombers will be an offence if the intention is to incite others to follow the same path. Should people be criminalised if they say things - rash, intemperate, distasteful to many - without such an intention? The government has not yet published its proposals, but this is likely to be the effect of what it is suggesting.


The government is not the only body making legislative proposals. The Association of Chief Police Officers has published its own wish list. While politicians have been refreshingly measured in their response to the attacks, ACPO seems prepared to use public anxiety to try to bounce politicians into accepting its agenda.


Of greatest concern is its proposal to extend the period that terrorist suspects can be held without charge from 14 days to three months. The association pleads difficulty and delays in obtaining forensic evidence as justification. But three months in police detention is equivalent to a six-month prison sentence. Are terrorist cases so difficult, so different from normal criminal cases that the police cannot get sufficient evidence to charge a suspect with an offence within 14 days (already considerably longer than a suspect for any other type of offence can be held pre-charge)?


I wonder also about the effect that so much media scrutiny will have on the trials of those accused. Already several suspects are in custody and will doubtless be charged. Yet media investigation of their backgrounds continues - schoolmates are interviewed and pundits speculate on what type of influences one of them may have been subject to in prison.


Suicide bombing, any bombing, is a heinous act, but those accused have the right to a fair trial. It is in all our interests that this is so. Isn't it time the law officers intervened to remind the media of this?


James Welch is legal director of civil rights campaigning group Liberty