Britain: Emergency Bill creates a furore

By Hasan Suroor

LONDON, NOV. 12. The British Government today prepared to assume extraordinary powers to detain suspected foreign terrorists indefinitely without trial, but the move provoked fury as Labour Party's own MPs joined civil rights groups to attack it.

This is the first time since the September 11 outrage that an anti-terrorism measure has come under such sharp attack with legal opinion uncertain if the proposed ``emergency'' law would survive a challenge in court.

The veteran Labour leader, Mr. Tony Benn, accused the Government of using terrorism as an ``excuse'' to impose ``authoritarian'' laws, while another party MP and former Minister, Mr. Mark Fisher, questioned the need for such a draconian measure saying the public would need ``a great deal of convincing''. He expected cross-party opposition to the move, when it is debated in the Commons next week.

The Liberal Democrat leader, Mr. Charles Kennedy, who has consistently supported the crackdown on terrorism, was furious that the Government was exceeding its brief. He said his party would resist any attempt to curtail civil liberties in the name of fighting terror. The Government, he alleged, was using the anti-terror campaign as a ``cover'' to introduce repressive laws. Even the Tory leader, Mr. Ian Duncan Smith, whose aggressive defence of the Government's anti-terrorism campaign has often made him seem like a member of the Treasury, was cautious saying he supported it ``in principle''. In the long- term, he suggested, Britain should get over the legal hurdle which prevents it from deporting suspected terrorists to America because of the death penalty in some American States.

Civil rights groups threatened to challenge the proposed law denouncing it as a ``violation'' of fundamental rights. ``The situation in the U.K. does not warrant such an extreme attack on a historic core principle of British justice,'' said Mr. John Wadham, director of Liberty, a leading human rights body. A prominent legal expert, who has represented the Government in the past, was quoted as saying it was ``open to considerable doubt'' whether Britain was facing an emergency situation to warrant such a law.

The Home Secretary, Mr. David Blunkett, who unveiled the new detention plans in the Commons today, was unfazed and dismissed his critics as ``airy fairy'' libertarians. ``We could live in a world which is airy fairy, libertarian where everybody does precisely what they like and we believe the best of everybody and then they destroy us. That isn't the world, regrettably, we live in,'' he told a TV interviewer. About fears that a large number of innocent people might end up in jail, he retorted: ``I don't give a damn whether it's one, a dozen or 20 - the important thing is that they don't put our lives at risk or enable others to put people's lives at risk elsewhere.'' He pointed out that civil liberties must be balanced against the need to protect human lives from terrorism.

Mr. Blunkett introduced an order seeking Parliament's approval for the Government's move to opt out of Article 5 of the European Convention on Human Rights which bars detention without trial. This would pave the way for the Emergency (Anti-Terror) Bill which, among other things, empowers the Government to detain without trial for up to six months any foreign national suspected of terrorist activity. However, they would have a right to appeal. The Government's argument is that Britain faces an ``emergency threatening the life of the nation'' and hence the need to lock up people who are seen to pose a threat, but cannot be deported to their own countries.

``The law will be used against people who claim asylum knowing that they cannot be deported because they come from a country where they would be killed or tortured if returned,'' The Daily Telegraph said. A number of prominent Muslim leaders, otherwise supportive of the crackdown on terrorists, have given a memorandum to Mr. Blunkett expressing concern that the new powers might be used to harass innocent Muslims because of the prevailing anti-Islamic backlash.

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Section  : International
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