Crisis of credibility

Kalu has now withdrawn the statement he made before a magistrate confessing to the crime and implicating opposition leaders as those behind the arson. His counsel claims that Kalu's confession was coerced and that he made his statement out of fear for his life. Another of the accused, Masum, also claims that his confession was coerced.

As it stands now, the case seems to have fallen apart. Kalu's statement that he was coerced into confessing and implicating opposition political leaders is yet to be proved, but there no longer seems to be any doubt that he was in police custody on the date in question, and could not have committed the crime, and it is hard to conceive of a reason for an innocent man to confess to a crime he didn't commit other than coercion.

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The troubling truth of the matter is that torture and abuse during interrogations in custody have become common place, going so far as to result in the death of the accused in a number of instances in the past twelve months and before. It has come to the point where any confession extracted during interrogation without corroborating facts must now be considered suspect. Even more so when the "confession" thus obtained conveniently points the finger of guilt at those the authorities wish to harass.

The real danger is that in such a climate even genuine confessions and statements will be met with suspicion. If the police no longer have any credibility in the matter of obtaining confessions, then it is law and order and application of justice that suffers. How can we have confidence in the judicial system if we cannot trust custodial confessions?

There is a simple solution. The law should demand that all interrogations must take place in the presence of counsel to be admissible as evidence. This is badly needed in order to restore credibility to confessions obtained through police interrogation.