MELBOURNE, June 13 (Xinhua) -- Suspected Australian terrorists could be held in prison for two weeks without charges under a Victorian government proposal revealed on Tuesday.
Daniel Andrews, Premier of Victoria, flagged the law changes that would allow law enforcement to arrest and detain teenagers deemed a serious terrorist threat for up to 14 days without laying charges.
Under current laws, suspects in Victoria can be detained for up to 72 hours but cannot be questioned.
If approved, the overhaul would lower the minimum detention age to 14 as well as granting police the power to question detainees.
The initial detention period would be four days which could be extended to 14 days if approved by a judge.
The proposal comes in response to a terrorist attack by Yacqub Khayre in Melbourne's southeast in June which killed one man.
Khayre was out of prison on parole after being convicted of a violent crime and was considered a terrorist threat by the Australian Federal Police (AFP).
Premier of Victoria Andrews warned that simply cracking down on parole and introducing stricter bail laws might not be enough to prevent terrorism.
He said the state would also consider building a specialist facility to detain convicted terrorists after their sentences were concluded if it as judged that they had not been reformed.
Andrews said that Victoria currently lacked the capacity to detain a person "who on all available intelligence presents an unacceptable risk but has not yet committed the crime."
"We would be dangerously wrong to think that reform to bail, reform to parole was the end of dealing with these threats," he added.
