December 19, 2003	Friday	Shawwal 24, 1424

LONDON, Dec 18: A powerful British parliamentary committee attacked the government’s anti-terror measures on Thursday in a damning report hailed by activists as a step toward restoring basic rights eroded after the Sept 11, 2001, attacks.

The committee said Britain should stop imprisoning foreigners without charge and ordered the government to reopen debate on its entire package of post-Sept 11 anti-terror laws, or emergency powers would be automatically revoked.

Britain has imprisoned at least 14 foreign “suspected international terrorists” without charge under measures imposed after the attacks in the United States.

The measures meant Britain became the only country to formally derogate from the European Convention of Human Rights, which bans countries holding suspects without charge.

But committee chairman Lord Newton of Braintree said: “Other countries have not found it necessary to make any such derogation and we have found no obvious reason why the UK should be the exception.”

Rights lawyers said the committee’s findings were a sign that a legal pendulum that had swung away from civil rights concerns toward security policy in many Western countries after September 11 is beginning to swing back the other way.

But Home Secretary David Blunkett defended the powers.

“These were not powers I assumed lightly. I have never pretended they are ideal, but I firmly believe that they are currently the best and most workable way to address the particular problems we face,” he said in a statement.

The privy council review committee can revoke any part of the new anti-terror measures within six months if parliament does not pass a motion acknowledging the committee’s findings.

It said the entire act should be revoked if debate is not reopened, and measures allowing foreigners to be held without charge should be abandoned “as a matter of urgency”.

The findings also suggest the authorities may have more difficulty than expected defending the measures when the House of Lords, acting as the country’s highest court, considers next year whether the detentions of foreigners are legal.

Lawyers for the detainees were delighted.

“It’s the first time anybody with any weight has stood up and said this legislation is wrong, and it’s something that we’ve been waiting and hoping for two years,” Natalia Garcia, who represents two of the jailed 14, told Reuters.

“We’ve said all along that it is a serious violation of human rights to detain people without charge.”

The suspects include Sheikh Abu Qatada, one of Europe’s highest-profile Al Qaeda-linked suspects, whose sermon videos authorities say inspired the Sept 11 hijackers.

He is wanted in his native Jordan for a string of bombings and British authorities say he recruited and inspired militants throughout North Africa and the Middle East.

Under the act, the government can hold foreigners if it considers them dangerous and cannot deport them because they may be tortured abroad. They are in theory free to leave Britain if they can find another country to take them, as two have done.

They can appeal to a special tribunal, but neither they nor their lawyers can see most of the evidence against them. Ten cases have been appealed so far, none successfully.

The committee said the measures created a risk of “miscarriage of justice” and incited “understandable disquiet among some parts of the Muslim population”. It also doubted the effectiveness of powers that do not apply to British citizens.

Rights activists have also been cheered in recent months by the US Supreme Court’s decision to review the cases of suspects held at the US prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

“I think this new committee report will be another swallow to make the Summer,” said Stephen Jakobi of UK legal rights group Fair Trials Abroad. “We’ve not quite got there yet, but every little helps in this direction.”—Reuters