UK unveils steps to curb terror: Two radical groups to be banned
LONDON, Aug 5: Britain will ban two radical groups from operating in the country as part of a raft of measures to be introduced following bomb attacks on London last month, Prime Minister Tony Blair said on Friday. The premier said his government would outlaw Hizb ut-Tahrir, an organisation that says it is dedicated to creating caliphate centred on the Middle East but insists it does not support violence.
He said the government would also ban a successor organisation to Al Muhajiroun.
“We will proscribe Hizb ut-Tahrir and the successor organisation of al Muhajiroun,” Mr Blair said at his final Downing Street news conference before an imminent summer break.
Some of the measures will be implemented immediately, while others will require a period of consultation or the introduction of new legislation later this year.
“Coming to Britain is not a right and even when people have come here, staying here carries with it a duty. That duty is to share and support the values that sustain the British way of life,” Mr Blair said.
Among potentially controversial moves is a possible review of the 1998 Human Rights Act, which incorporates the European Convention on Human Rights into British law, to see if it might have to be circumvented to speed up the deportation of foreign nationals linked to terror.
A section of the convention preventing deportation if the detained person fears torture on their return home might be challenged, Mr Blair said. Additionally, he said, Britain’s obligations under international asylum rules would be altered.
“Anyone who has participated in terrorism or has anything to do with it, anywhere, will automatically be refused asylum in our country.”
After the July 7 attacks in which 52 people and four suicide bombers died in blasts on subway trains and a bus, and a bungled attempted repeat a fortnight later when the bombs failed, attitudes in Britain had hardened, Mr Blair said.
Overall, the response of the British people had been “unified and dignified and remarkable,” he said. “However, I am acutely aware that alongside these feelings is also a determination that this very tolerance and good nature should not be abused by a small but fanatical minority, and an anger that it has been.”
Mr Blair said he had been asked many times in the past four weeks to ‘deal firmly’ with those who incited terrorism, such as hardline clerics. And although the four July 7 attackers were British Muslims, three of Pakistani origin, the new measures were in no way an attack on the Muslim community.
“The Muslim community, I should emphasise, has been and is our partner in this endeavour,” Mr Blair said.
Some of the new rules require only an administrative change to existing laws meaning they can be introduced immediately, Mr Blair said, while others need parliamentary approval in the autumn.
He said powers would be extended allowing the government to strip citizenship from people with British or dual nationality who “act in a way that is contrary to the interest of this country.”
For British nationals, the government would extend the use of so-called ‘control orders’, which currently allow measures such as limited house arrest for foreign nationals suspected of terrorism.
Mr Blair’s personal popularity in Britain has been boosted by his response to the twin attacks, but he remains dogged by the Iraq war, notably whether his decision to back the US-led conflict made London a prime terrorism target.
On Thursday, Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden’s right-hand man Ayman al-Zawahiri released a filmed statement warning of more attacks unless Britain withdrew from Iraq.
Mr Blair responded angrily to a question about this. “And that is why, when they try to use Iraq or use Afghanistan or use the Palestinian cause as a means of saying, you know, we have justification for what we do, it is a complete obscenity,” he said.—Agencies
