UK told to persevere with control orders
IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency
London, Feb 1, IRNA -- Control orders used to monitor some terror suspects must not be abandoned as the move could harm UK security, the government’s independent reviewer of terrorism legislation has concluded.
Lord Carlile said in a parliamentary statement Monday that there were "no better means" of restricting some suspects' actions than the house arrest-like conditions, despite the use of control orders based on secret evidence being ruled unlawful last year.
The ruling by the House of Lords has led to the lifting of control orders against a number of suspects due to the government refusing to disclose adequate evidence to justify why they were being imposed.
Control orders are used to restrict an individual's liberty for the purpose of "protecting members of the public from a risk of terrorism" when the government believes there is insufficient evident to gain a conviction in court.
"I have been unable to find, or devise, a suitable alternative for the important residue of cases that cannot be dealt with by prosecution," Carlile said.
"There is no better means of dealing with the serious and continuing risk posed by some individuals,” he said, after being asked to carry out a review following the House of Lord’s ruling.
The Liberal Democrat peer, who is also a lawyer, said that he would have reached the same conclusions as Home Secretary Alan Johnson in each case that he had looked at from 2009.
He suggested that the system needed improving and called for the government to think again about how it restricted the freedoms of those suspected only of wanting to travel abroad for terrorist training.
In these cases, he recommended that control orders should be replaced by Travel Restriction Orders (TROs) for the “radicalised person whose first or early intentions are manifested by the desire to go for training and/or to act as an insurgent."
Control orders, originally introduced in 2005, were revised to include British citizens in 2007 when they were ruled by the European Court of Human Rights to be discriminatory in being imposed only against foreign nationals.
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End News / IRNA / News Code 934026
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