Heroin suspects: Detention likely for 14 days

The Attorney General is considering amendments to empower police to detain heroin- case suspects for 14 days to question them under detention orders.

This comes after he had turned down a proposal by the police to detain suspects for 28 days. Under existing laws, police can only obtain a detention order to hold a suspect for a maximum of seven days after producing them before a magistrate.

The proposal was taken up for discussion at a high level meeting at the Presidential Secretariat on Friday. The talks centred on drafting laws aimed at drug control and crime reduction.

At the meeting chaired by President Maithripala Sirisena, AG’s Department officials said the AG opposed the proposal to detain suspects for up to 28 days as the number of suspects arrested while in possession of large stocks of drugs was less than 50.

If laws were amended to detain suspects for up to 28 days, and if the law was applied equally,

it would mean that thousands arrested for possessing even a few milligrams of drugs were liable to be held for that long, they pointed out.

The AG’s Department officials noted that if police wanted to detain suspects for longer than seven days, the AG was of the view that 14 days should be sufficient and that the department was agreeable to amend legislation to that effect.

It was, however, stressed that amending laws alone would not succeed unless steps were taken to provide more resources to police, particularly human resources.

It had been pointed out that police still did not have enough officers to investigate money laundering, one of the key methods used by major drug traffickers to finance their operations.

President Sirisena also discussed the possibility of setting up a special court solely to hear cases related to drug crimes.

Defence Secretary Hemasiri Fernando, ministry secretaries, senior police and Special Task Force ( STF) officials were present at the meeting, with the AG’s Department being represented by Additional Solicitor General Ayesha Jinasena, Senior State Counsel Sudarshana de Silva and Senior State Counsel Janaka Bandara.