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BRITAIN
TO DETAIN ALLEGED TERRORISTS WITHOUT TRIAL
 LONDON, Nov. 11 (News
Agencies) - BBC’s online service reported Sunday that emergency powers to
detain alleged terrorist suspects without trial are to be sought by the British
government.
The move is part of the
government's response to the deadly 11 September attacks in the United States.
The proposed new legislation
will be targeted at foreign nationals suspected of terrorism who cannot
currently be deported under existing immigration laws.
While it has Conservative
Party support, the bill has been condemned by civil rights campaigners who are
planning to challenge it in the courts, BBC reported.
On Monday, Home Secretary
David Blunkett is expected to submit the legislation before the House of Commons
to enable Britain to temporarily opt out of article five of the European
Convention on Human Rights.
Article Five of the
Convention guarantees the right to liberty and prohibits detention without
trial.
But Article 15 of the
Convention allows governments to revoke article five in times of war or other
"public emergency".
The emergency legislation,
which will have to be approved by Parliament, is expected to be a temporary
measure to cover the duration of the conflict in Afghanistan, BBC reported.
Under Home Office plans,
detention without trial would apply in "very limited circumstances".
Sources say the measure will
not mean that all foreigners suspected of terrorism can be detained without
trial.
Rather it will be targeted at
those who cannot be deported back to their country of origin because they come
from repressive regimes, such as Afghanistan or Iraq.
The civil rights group,
Liberty, described the move as "a fundamental violation of the rule of
law".
"We already have some of
the strictest counter terrorist laws in the Western world,” Mark Littlewood,
director of campaigns at Liberty, told the BBC.
"If we want to win this
war, we are just going to have to be cleverer and smarter about how we track
down terrorists rather than bringing in these enormous blanket, vast attacks on
civil liberties, which it isn't clear to me are actually going to help us track
down these criminals."
Liberty's human rights
litigation unit will seek to challenge the measure in the European courts.
The move by the government
follows a warning by the U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney that Britain's support
for the military campaign in Afghanistan could prompt retaliatory strikes by al-Qaeda.
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