UNFORTUNATELY Mr Mcternan and I still seem to be at cross purposes (Letters, June 17).

I was never seeking to cast doubt on the seriousness of terrorist threats, nor ignoring the fact that there has been much to criticise in the recent content and application of the law relating to human rights.

I was simply making the point that failure to apply appropriate legal safeguards, whether termed “due process” or “human rights” merely begets human wrongs and is ultimately self-defeating.

A particularly poignant example of what can happen when we get it wrong was the case of a 62-year-old German chemistry professor who had been imprisoned and tortured in a German concentration camp shortly before the war.

He was an “enemy alien” but very much a victim of Nazi oppression and, safely in England as he thought, was engaged at the time on work of national importance to our British war effort.

His firm had recently applied to the Home Office for his exemption from internment, but in July 1940 two police officers arrived at his flat to take him away.

He showed them a copy of his Home Office application and asked them to wait until his case had been investigated before arresting him.

They refused and told him that they would be returning shortly. By the time they returned two hours later, he had taken his own life.

Those particular two hours can hardly be counted among Britain’s finest.

Tony Lawton, Skelton, York