This Is Guernsey

By Nick Mollet

A GUERNSEYMAN will be involved in a landmark legal challenge at the highest level of the European Court of Human Rights next month. Solicitor and civil liberties specialist Peter Mahy is pursuing two cases in the Grand Chamber that will determine whether fingerprints and DNA samples taken from people who have been acquitted of crimes can be kept by police.

The ramifications could be global and the cases have attracted widespread media interest.

‘It will define the legal situation in the whole of Europe, including Guernsey and the other Channel Islands,’ said Mr Mahy, 36, a former Grammar School student who works for Sheffield-based firm Howells.

‘It’s probably the furthest a case has gone involving a Guernseyman. I never thought I would get as far as this and it’s going to be an amazing feeling to go to Strasbourg,’ he said.

As the storm around the missing child benefit database brings concern and anxiety to millions of families across the UK, the cases have been granted a hearing in Strasbourg before 17 judges on 27 February.

‘The whole issue of the security of personal details kept by the authorities has been thrust into the spotlight by the recent debacle concerning the loss of copies of the child benefit database and it is particularly timely that we have heard that this case - which had already been fast-tracked to the highest level of the ECHR - will now be the subject of an oral hearing.

‘That shows the level of significance accorded to this case by the ECHR and we believe that this latest evidence of the insecurity of details held by the state will provide additional force for our argument that to maintain the samples of those who have not been prosecuted or who have been acquitted of crimes is a major breach of an individual’s human rights,’ said Mr Mahy.

‘We have already taken these cases to the House of Lords, which unfortunately ruled against us - although it was not a unanimous decision as one of the judges supported our argument that Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights was engaged,’ said Mr Mahy.

‘We think this is one of the most important human rights challenges the ECHR has grappled with over recent years, especially given the growing enthusiasm of the present ‘UK’ government to make the DNA database as wide as possible. More and more innocent people are going to find that the state has retained their very ﾓblueprint for lifeﾔ in its official records.

‘The wider picture is the importance of the case for a national database. There are implications for everybody. Should everybody’s DNA and fingerprints be taken, for example, at hospital when they are born?’ he asked.

‘There are five million people on the UK database and more than 300,000 of them have never been convicted.

‘The fear is the information will be used in future not just for detecting crime but, for example, insurance companies looking at whether a person is likely to be at higher risk of genetic illnesses,’ said Mr Mahy.

He believes that if a person is not convicted of a crime, they are entitled to be put back in the same position as anyone without a criminal record.

Many countries retain DNA samples of those convicted of very serious offences only.