Another terror suspect goes missing

Tuesday, 16 January 2007 12:00 AM

Another terror suspect being monitored under a control order has absconded, the Home Office has confirmed, in the second scandal to hit the department in ten days.

Police minister Tony McNulty said the individual had had his passport confiscated and was required to visit a police station daily because he or she had "recently been radicalised" and wanted to travel abroad for "terrorism-related purposes".

In a written statement to parliament, the minister said the individual, who absconded earlier this month, did not currently represent a direct threat to the UK public.

However, it is the third terror suspect to go missing under the control order system, and has raised questions about its efficiency. In August, someone absconded before the order could be served, and another went missing in September.

Ministers have previously acknowledged flaws in the system, which was introduced under the Terrorism Act 2005 after the law lords ruled the indefinite detention of terror suspects without charge at Belmarsh prison was unlawful.

But shadow home secretary David Davis warned tonight: "Far from getting a grip since John Reid took over, the Home Office has been marked by murderers walking out of open prisons and suspected terrorists escaping from control orders.

"This latest failure demonstrates what we said some time ago. This [control order] legislation has achieved the remarkable double of being both repressive and ineffective at the same time."

Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Nick Clegg added: "Control orders were the centrepiece of the government's anti-terrorist strategy. There must now be a wholesale review of their effectiveness as part of the long-promised overhaul of anti-terror laws."

In a separate statement this afternoon, home secretary Mr Reid updated MPs on another scandal to hit the Home Office - the revelation that details of 27,000 Britons convicted of crimes abroad had not been entered on the official police database.

He confirmed that five of the 540 most serious offenders had been checked by employers when they were not on the database, but none of these had been convicted for serious or violent crimes.

Another nine people whose identities were uncertain had also been the subject of checks, but Mr Reid said that none of these were guilty of sexual or violent offences and all their employers or prospective employers had now been informed.

Police were now ensuring all sex offenders in the backlog of files were on the sex offenders register, he said, and that the whereabouts of all violent offenders was known so it could be properly managed.

Mr Reid said the problem was "not helped" by the complexity of sharing data on offenders within the UK and across Europe, and said he was proposing a "thorough review" of the way this was done.

Earlier, Tony Blair expressed full confidence in the home secretary, saying the changes he was implementing would bring improvements. He added that the Home Office was dealing with a "range of incredibly difficult issues in very challenging circumstances".

Tags:
• crime
,
• domestic policy
,
• terrorism