Seventh terror suspect disappears
The suspect absconded on Monday night
Thursday, 21, Jun 2007 12:00
A seventh terror suspect on a control order has absconded, it was revealed today.
The suspect disappeared on Monday night and Home Office minister Tony McNulty revealed the situation to the House of Commons today in a written statement.
He said: "I am today informing parliament of an ongoing police operation to locate a foreign national who is believed to have absconded from his control order on the night of June 18.
"An anonymity order is in place and, on the operational advice of the police, the government is not currently seeking to overturn it."
Mr McNulty adopted similar tones to the home secretary John Reid in pinning blame for the disappearance on restrictions placed on the government by a coalition of judges, civil liberty groups and opposition parties.
"Unfortunately, within these limits, it is very difficult to prevent determined individuals from absconding," he said.
"We will consider other options – including derogation [from the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR)] – if we have exhausted ways of overturning previous judgments on this issue."
The government already derogated from the ECHR following the terrorist attacks of September 11 but later court judgements ruled this was not justified but the level of threat.
The shadow home secretary David Davies said: "This is yet another example of how control orders, while doing much to undermine our rights and freedoms, are astonishingly ineffective at protecting our safety."
Nick Clegg Lib Dem home affairs spokesman, shared Mr Davies' condemnation.
"This is yet another serious blow for the increasingly discredited system of control orders," he said.
"At this rate every single one of them will have suffered a breach within a matter of months.
Mr Clegg continued: "When it is so obvious that control orders are not working, the government must now hold a wholesale review.
"Consigning people to a legal limbo beyond the reach of the courts instead of trying to prosecute them is bad enough, but when these control orders are weakly enforced it is inevitable that attempts will be made to escape and that some will succeed."