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Asset Stripping
British government announces plans to seize assets belonging to suspected drug dealers on arrest
Home Secretary Jacqui Smith revealed the latest government encroachment on British civil liberties in her "Ten Year Plan" on drug crime. Suspected drug dealers will have "high value assets" such as cars and jewellery confiscated on their arrest to prevent the accused from "dispersing" their assets when on trial.
As that Devil's Kitchen fellow points out on The Last of the Few, this is nothing less than presumed guilt.
Tim Worstall calls it as it is: "Out and out robbery by the government."
Does the government reckon it can get around the Human Rights Act on this one? The European Convention on Human Rights, which the British signed up to in the 1998 Human Rights Act, states (Part 2, Article 2),
"Every natural or legal person is entitled to the peaceful enjoyment of his possessions. No one shall be deprived of his possessions except in the public interest and subject to the conditions provided for by law and by the general principles of international law.
"The preceding provisions shall not, however, in any way impair the right of a State to enforce such laws as it deems necessary to control the use of property in accordance with the general interest or to secure the payment of taxes or other contributions or penalties."
Here's Devil's Kitchen:
"Those who have been following the course of New Labour's steady destruction of traditional British liberties will notice a very simple pattern emerging. First, the government removes the rights of those who many would consider undesirables—Muslim "terrorists", drug-dealers, prostitutes, and the like—and then gradually the rights are removed from the rest of us.
"(...) And anyone who things that this will be limited to drug-dealers is either a fool or dangerously naive. It will not be limited to drug-dealers at all. But New Labour are using that as the headline, because drug-dealers are, as we pointed out before, evil men who deserve all that they get."
