Control orders failure as terror suspects flee

The British government's use of control orders to limit the movements of people it suspects of being involved in international terrorism was dealt a severe blow yesterday when it was revealed that two people held under the scheme had escaped... and that the government had failed to notify the general public that the pair of supposedly "dangerous" persons were at large.

The control orders are a controversial scheme where the British government can tag and subject to house arrest any person that they suspect of being involved in terrorism, especially if they lack the evidence to prosecute through the courts.

I always had severe reservations about giving this power to arrest people on suspicion of terrorist involvement to the same people who believed that Saddam possessed WMD, and have always believed that our system works best when it is based on evidence presented to a court a law and judged by a jury of your peers.

The men in question, one British and one Iraqi, have escaped and police have been unable to trace either of them. The British suspect escaped out the window of a mental institution and the Iraqi is believed to have been missing for some months now.

Which all rather begs the question: if they really are so dangerous, why weren't we informed?

Asked why the Home Office had not told the public earlier about the suspects' escapes, (McNulty) said: "I can say very clearly and assure people that the people who needed to know in both cases have known."

In response to suggestions the two suspects could carry out an attack at any time, Mr McNulty said: "On balance, I don't think that's the case at all."

So McNulty thinks there is very little chance that these "dangerous" men, one of whom has been at large for some months now, will be planning to attack us. Which makes one wonder why they are being held in custody?

This is farcical. Either they are dangerous and need locked up or they are not. McNulty seems to be saying they are dangerous, but at the same time assuring us that we have nothing to worry about.

And the absurdity of control orders was highlighted by the pleas from the family of one of the suspects:

The family of the British suspect say they are concerned for his safety and are appealing for his return to fight the allegations against him.

What makes the control orders so draconian is that the man has no way to fight the allegations against him as the government have declined to ever state what those allegations are. That is what makes the whole scheme so disgracefully unfair. The government has made itself judge, jury and executioner and the accused are simply arrested without having ever had any chance to question or even know the evidence that is being used to support their detention.

The suspect maintains that he was arrested during a recent visit to Pakistan, held for seven months and tortured by the intelligence services.

His brother told BBC News: "We don't know what to think. We don't know what sort of mind he might be in."

The brother raises a very good point. What state of mind would you be in had you been arrested, tortured and held for months or years with no way to defend yourself? I'd be pretty pissed off.

The man who escaped from the West Middlesex secure psychiatric unit was alleged to have been part of a cell of Britons planning to travel to Iraq to attack coalition forces, anti-terrorist officials believe. He had been held in Pakistan for several months where he claimed he was tortured repeatedly. Originally from west London, he returned to Britain only to be served with a control order in April 2006.

Friends and supporters last night said he had been harassed by police and became so ill he was placed in the psychiatric unit in the middle of September, only to escape after a week. One friend of the 25-year-old said: "The pressure they put on him led to him suffering a breakdown. He thought he was being persecuted. I spoke to him about 5pm on the day he escaped and he seemed all right."

It's not a matter of whether he felt he was being persecuted, he was being persecuted, the question is whether he was being persecuted with good reason or not. And, under the present system, that is something that we have no way of knowing and he has no way of establishing or even defending himself from charges that remain unstated.

Shami Chakrabarti, director of human rights group Liberty, said control orders did not work.

"This confirms our worst fears about the farce that is the control orders regime. They are both unsafe and fundamentally unfair," she said.

"If someone is truly a dangerous terror suspect, why would you leave them at large?

"On the other hand it is completely cruel and unfair to label someone a terrorist and to subject them to a range of punishments for years on end without ever charging them or putting them on trial."

The government's answer to this embarrassing gaffe is not to promise to look again at the subject of control orders, it is rather to introduce even more draconian measures into the control order legislation.

Mr McNulty hinted at the need for a stronger version of control orders which would depart from the European Convention on Human Rights.

He told BBC Two's Newsnight: "We'll keep this under review. We have provision in the law for a different form of control orders and at this stage we don't rule either in or out.

So the government - in the light of the escape of two persons so "dangerous" that they felt no need to inform us - now proposes to move even further from the European Convention on Human Rights and introduce even stricter measures than the ones they currently employ.

The Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, Nick Clegg, said: "Since control orders were the government's flagship anti-terrorism measure, this is a huge embarrassment ... the danger of control orders is that they short-circuit due process and keep suspects in limbo. Our aim must be to get suspects into court and, where they are guilty, convicted. This should act as a spur for the government to develop more robust ways to get suspects into court in the first place, such as using intercept evidence."

There can be no justification for any system that leaves suspects in legal limbo, and one has to wonder how the British government can condemn the American government's use of Guantanamo whilst holding people in similar legal black holes in their own country.

The disgrace of Guantanamo is not the physical space itself, it is the fact that the people held there have no way of defending themselves against the government's accusations.

The same principle applies, even if the place you are held in is your own home.

tag: war on terror, control orders, terror, terrorists, terrorism, escape, Guantanamo, Bay, UK, suspects,