UK plans to outlaw camp ‘recruitment’: Glorification as ‘martyr’ being made offence
LONDON, July 16: The British government is seeking to introduce new anti-terror laws that would ban indirect incitement of terrorism and make it illegal to provide or undergo ‘terrorist training,’ newspapers reported on Saturday.
The Guardian said the laws are designed to stop the flow of British recruits to what it described as terrorist training camps and schools in Pakistan and Iraq while making it a criminal offence to describe those who carry out suicide bombings as martyrs.
Officials said the measures were drafted before the July 7 bombings that killed 54 people on London underground trains and a bus, it said. They planned to discuss them with opposition parties next week.
Home Secretary Charles Clarke wrote to members of opposition parties on Friday outlining the government’s plans for a bill in the fall that is expected to receive parliamentary ratification by next summer, the Financial Times said.
The proposed bill will contain provisions that would make ‘indirect incitement to commit terrorist acts’ a criminal offence, the Financial Times reported. Direct incitement is already a crime.
Asked what might be construed as indirect incitement, Hazel Blears, Home Office minister, was quoted by the Financial Times as saying that praise for someone as a ‘martyr’ could be seen as glorifying and endorsing terrorism.
The Guardian said the centrepiece of the legislation would be the new crime of ‘acts preparatory to terrorism’, designed to make it easier for security services to intervene when an attack was being planned.
Mr Clarke said it would cover providing or receiving training in the use of hazardous substances and in other methods or techniques for attacks. “This covers training provided or received in the UK and abroad,” he was quoted as saying by the Guardian.
The proposed bill will be a follow-up to a controversial law, adopted earlier this year, that empowered the authorities to slap ‘control orders’ on individuals with suspected terrorist links.
Britain’s main piece of anti-terrorism legislation remains the Terrorism Act 2000, which came into force in Feb 2001 — seven months before the Sept 11 attacks in the United States.
It gives police enhanced powers to investigate terrorist incidents, including the right to detain suspects for up to a week without charge with the approval of a judge.
It was reinforced after the attacks on New York and Washington by the Anti-Terrorism Crime and Security Act 2001, which controversially enabled the authorities to detain foreign terrorism suspects indefinitely without trial.
The Law Lords, the de facto supreme court under English law, struck it down in December as incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights.
A replacement law, the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005, was introduced in February and adopted after intensive debate, with a pledge from Mr Clarke for a better-shaped law to be introduced later this year.
It brought into being the concept of ‘control orders’ restricting the movement and behaviour of individuals who might be linked to terrorism, but cannot be charged due to a lack of proper evidence. —AFP
