The UK Attorney-General got really worked up after 9/11 about the detention without trial in Gitmo of British terrorists captured in the field of battle by the USA.
The British had internment without trial from 1971 to 1975 in Northern Ireland. The UK Attorney-general accidentally forgot about this when getting prim and proper over the detention of British terrorists abroad:
- Internment without trial was not new as the Northern Ireland Government had used special powers acts from time to time since 1922; and
- The 1971 internments were under the Civil Authorities (Special Powers) Act (1922) (Northern Ireland) on August 9, 1971, and then the Detention of Terrorists (Northern Ireland) Order 1972.
Antiterrorist laws in the UK from the 1970s onwards allowed suspects to be held for 7 or 14 days without charge, and now allow for 42 days detention without being charge.
Canada interned 450 Quebec nationalists without trial during the October crisis in 1971 after two kidnappings and a history of bombings and several murders dating from the early 1960s. That left-wing hero Trudeau was the dirty rotten scoundrel behind this human rights abomination. Canada uses a memory hole for the October crisis when it rides its own high horse over Gitmo
Australia and the UK had interment of enemy aliens in World War 1 and 2:
- During the First World War, 6,890 Germans were interned, of whom 4,500 were Australian residents before 1914. In NSW the principal place of internment was the Holsworthy Military Camp. Shame Labour shame!
- Australia interned about 7000 residents, including more than 1500 British nationals, during World War II. A further 8000 people were sent to Australia to be interned after being detained overseas by Allies. At its peak in 1942, more than 12,000 people were interned in Australia. Shame Labor shame.
Canada and the USA interned Japanese citizens and aliens by the hundreds of thousands in World War 2.
Lincoln suspended habeas corpus in the civil war. He did not consult Congress.
Roosevelt had several German saboteurs that landed in the USA quickly executed after brief trials before military commissions in 1942.
The detention of captured enemy combatants is incidental to the conduct of a war.
Was this detention without trial wrong? Did these soldiers have a right to a trial? Did they have the right to bail? The right of access to a lawyer?
There would need to have been a lot of lawyers because 11 million German and Japanese soldiers were detained by the Allies by the end of the war in 1945.
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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