January 18, 2007	Thursday	Zilhaj 27, 1427

LONDON, Jan 17: British Interior Minister John Reid faced fresh embarrassment on Wednesday after an international terror suspect supposedly under strict supervision absconded – the third to do so in less than six months.

The home secretary told parliament on Tuesday that the individual disappeared earlier this month while subject to a control order, a loose form of house arrest that the government introduced controversially in March 2005.

Britain has been on high alert since July 2005 suicide bombings left 56 people dead on the London transport system.

The Times newspaper said the escaped suspect was a British-born 26-year-old of Pakistani origin who lived in Manchester, north-west England.

He evaded police by taking refuge in a mosque before escaping abroad after claiming he wanted to attend terrorist training camps in Afghanistan, the daily said.

The revelation about his escape came less than a week after Reid’s department admitted it overlooked 275,000 files on Britons convicted abroad whose details should have been entered onto criminal record databases.—AFP