http://www.masnet.org/news.asp?id=2685

Britain to Deport 10 Foreigners in Crackdown

Date Posted: Thursday, August 11, 2005

Great Britain detained and is planning to deport 10 radical extremists on grounds of national security.

LONDON, Aug 11 (MASNET & News Agencies) - Ten foreigners were detained and face deportation from Britain on national security grounds as part of a crackdown on hardline extremists in the wake of last month's bombings in London.



One of the detainees was said to be Sheik Omar Mahmood Abu Omar, also known as Abu Qatada, 44, a Jordanian of Palestinian background, resident in Britain for 12 years who has been described as al-Qaeda's spiritual leader and "ambassador" in Europe, and who has been the subject of a "control order" or house curfew, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).



Britain has said in court papers that Qatada is a "truly dangerous individual ... at the center in the United Kingdom of terrorist activities associated with al-Qaeda."



He was sentenced in Jordan to life imprisonment in absentia for involvement in terrorist attacks there in 1998, reports Reuters.



Qatada is accused by Spanish prosecutors of being an inspiration for Mohammed Atta and others who launched the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, the news agency reports.



In Lebanon, meanwhile, another outspoken foreign extremist living in Britain, Omar Bakri Mohammed, was detained by police in Beirut, five days after he flew there from London for what he described as a vacation.



Yasser al-Serri, head of the Islamic Observatory in London, said Qatada was detained at around 6:00 a.m. when 35 to 40 officers came to his home in the British capital in four vehicles.



He told AFP that others arrested included seven Algerians and a second Jordanian. The origin of the 10th detainee was not known.



Home Secretary Charles Clarke said he used a power to "deport individuals whose presence in the U.K. is not conducive to the public good for reasons of national security," enabling the Immigration Service to detain the 10.



"The circumstances of our national security have changed, it is vital that we act against those who threaten it," Clarke said in a statement. The detainees have five business days to appeal their deportations, reports the Associated Press (AP).



"They will be held in secure prison service accommodation, and I shall not disclose their names," he said.



Lawyer Gareth Peirce, who represents seven detainees, said the group included one man seized from a psychiatric hospital, reports Reuters.



"People have been whisked off to prison and we are being denied access to them," she said. "Now it's suddenly fine to deport people who for years the government has said it was unsafe to do so. It's quite extraordinary."



The detainees - picked up in London and in Bedfordshire, Leicestershire and West Midlands in central England - have the right to appeal any deportation order to the Special Immigration Appeals Commission, but the process could take years, a top immigration official said.



"The process can drag on for months if not years," said Keith Best, the chief executive of the Immigration Advisory Service.



Once the advisory service makes its decision, the detainees can lodge further appeals to the Court of Appeal, the House of Lords and, ultimately, to the European Court of Human Rights at Strasbourg.



Britain rushed through laws after the September 11, attacks, giving police the power to hold foreign terrorism suspects indefinitely without charge or trial, reports Reuters.



After the U.K.'s top court ruled this illegal saying the legislation breached human rights, the powers were replaced with new legislation allowing the government to impose restrictions on suspects including house arrest, the news agency reports.



Britain is holding 10 people under these "control orders," including Qatada. The Home Office said some of those it planned to deport were being held under control orders.



Qatada spent three years in a high security British prison without being charged under the anti-terror powers, but he was released in March after the court ruling, reports the AP.



He was swiftly re-arrested under the “control orders� which allow suspects to be electronically tagged, kept under curfew, denied the use of telephones or the Internet and barred from meeting outsiders, even if no charges are filed, the news agency reports.



Home Office Minister Hazel Blears justified the arrests on the basis of national security.



She told BBC radio that "intense discussions" were under way with countries where they could be deported to, to ensure they would not be ill-treated or tortured.



As a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights, Britain is not allowed to deport people to a country where they may face torture or death, reports the AP.



Thursday's detentions came a day after the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding with Jordan which was said to guarantee that deportees would not be mistreated there after their forced return from Britain.



Jordanian authorities, however, said Thursday they had not yet requested Qatada's extradition from Britain.



Hardline extremists have largely been free to live and speak out in Britain for years, much to the frustration of other European countries that complained the resulting "Londonistan" had become a safe haven for militants.



They include Bakri, a Syrian-born cleric and founder of Al-Muhajiroun who left Britain last Saturday for what he called a holiday in Lebanon amid speculation as to whether he would be allowed to return.



Britain's Foreign Office said no British warrant had been issued for Bakri. Britain's Home Office declined to say whether it had lodged an extradition request. However, such a move was considered unlikely as the government had been considering how to deport or bar Bakri from Britain, reports the AP.



Bakri called the al-Qaeda hijackers who carried out the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States the "magnificent 19," and more recently said that as a Muslim, he would never report a would-be terrorist to police.



Prime Minister Tony Blair also had "constructive conversations" with authorities in Algeria and Lebanon last week over guaranteeing the safety of deportees.



In all, Britain is looking for assurances from 10 countries, a Home Office spokeswoman said.



"We now have good reason to believe that we can get necessary assurances from the countries to which we will return the deportees so that they will not be subject to torture or ill-treatment," Clarke said in a statement.



Human rights activists and the U.N. special envoy on torture, Manfred Nowak, said, however, that such assurances have no weight in international law and would not sufficiently protect the deportees, reports the AP.



Prior to going on holiday, Blair - saying "the rules of the game are changing" - rolled out a raft of anti-terrorist measures targeting hardline extremists it believes are inciting or glorifying militant attacks in the wake of the July 7 attacks on three Underground subway trains and a double-decker bus which killed 56 people.



The dead included four apparent suicide bombers, three of them Muslim Britons of Pakistani descent, and the fourth a Jamaican-born naturalized Briton.



Meanwhile, 10 people appeared in a central London magistrate’s court charged with failing to provide information to police regarding a failed attempt on July 21 to repeat the bombings.



British police have not charged anyone in the July 7 bombings, reports the AP.



In another development, a Briton deported from Zambia over the weekend appeared in a London court where he was remanded in custody until September 8 as the United States seeks his extradition.


Haroon Rashid Aswat, 30, is alleged by Washington to have been involved in setting up a camp in the state of Oregon to train U.S. and British men to fight in Afghanistan.