New blow for Home Office as judge quashes six terror orders

No doubt Blair and Cameron will be holding hands again and expressing their mutual outrage as a judge has demolished Blair's plans to hold suspects under house arrest saying that this contravenes their rights under human rights law.

The new Home Secretary John Reid, a man who's political leanings place him slightly to the right of Ghengis Khan, nearly burst a blood vessel in expressing his outrage:

Reid "strongly disagreed" with the ruling by Mr Justice Sullivan, which overturns nearly half the 14 control orders currently in force. He will try to overturn it in the court of appeal next month. Mr Reid said the control order system was needed to deal with international terror suspects who could not be deported on human rights grounds to countries where there was risk of torture.

But this latest clash over human rights between the government and the senior judiciary is a sharp illustration that the crisis facing the Home Office is not over yet. Tony Blair warned the judges again yesterday that he is prepared to legislate to overturn their rulings if necessary.

Blair and Reid seem to be heading for a battle that they are almost certain to lose. At the centre of this dispute is whether or not the government have the right to put individuals under virtual house arrest because they suspect involvement in terrorist activity but do not have any evidence of sufficient merit to put before a court of law.

When the people who told us that Iraq had WMD state that a certain individual is probably a terrorist one can understand why a court might ask that they be held to a stricter standard for a persons confinement than merely their own suspicions.

And that is, literally, what this comes down to.

Mr Justice Sullivan said the home secretary had acted illegally when he used control orders to lock up six Middle Eastern men for 18 hours a day in one-bedroom flats across the country after failing to bring charges under the Terrorism Act.

He told the government it had no power to make the orders. Each of the orders was a legal "nullity".

The men had been deprived of their liberty and freedom in contravention of article 5 of the European convention on human rights.

Mr Justice Sullivan severely criticised the home secretary for first claiming to international human rights monitors that the courts could quash control orders, but then a year later telling the courts that it would be "inappropriate" to quash them.

This change in position was "more than unfortunate" and had "the potential to undermine the government, to undermine confidence in public administration and its integrity". It is the second time in three months that Mr Justice Sullivan has criticised the orders. In April he overturned a seventh control order on a British terror suspect known only as "S", calling it an "affront to justice".

Six men, five of them Iraqi, and one of either Iraqi or Iranian origin, were arrested under anti-terrorism legislation in October last year and released without charge. The six were then held under immigration laws before being placed under control orders.

Their lives were "for all intents and purposes under the control of the Home Office" and they were not able to "lead a normal life". The men were under curfew for 18 hours a day enforced by an electronic tag and were not allowed to attend any public meetings. The home secretary decided which mosque they could attend.

Mr Justice Sullivan said: "The freedom to meet any person of one's choice by prior arrangement is significant. As is the freedom to attend any temple, mosque, church as whatever you choose." He went on: "I am left in no doubt whatsoever that the cumulative effect of the order has been to deprive to respondents of their liberty, in breach of article 5. I do not consider that this is a borderline case." The judge said he had taken into account the importance of the needs of protecting the public from acts of terrorism, but "human rights or international law must not be infringed or compromised".

No doubt Blair will, with his fractured logic, argue that the judge is putting lives at risk by overturning his house arrests.

In doing so, Blair - who is himself a lawyer - will be ignoring the simple fact that it is incumbent on the government itself to bring evidence. If they do not have sufficient evidence then the failing lies with them.

All of us wish to be protected from acts of terrorism. But we cannot dispense with the principle that all men are innocent until a jury of their peers finds them guilty based on evidence.

Blair and his Home Office team should work harder at acquiring this evidence if these men really are as dangerous as they claim they are.

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