UK "TERRORIST" FREED WITHOUT CHARGE AFTER 3 YEARS IMPRISONMENT

Freedom for detained UK terror suspect

Paola Totaro, London
September 8, 2009 - 12:00AM

AN ALLEGED terror suspect, held under house arrest for three years, has been freed by the British Government to avoid disclosing secret evidence against him.

The 28-year-old man, who holds dual Libyan and British nationality, is described as one of Britain's most dangerous suspects due to his alleged links with Islamic terrorists. But he has never been charged nor has he been told the detail of any allegations against him.

A panel of nine Law Lords has ruled unanimously that as the suspect did not know what he was accused of - or what evidence was used against him - his detention is illegal.

This opens the way for up to 20 men, who are held under special control orders as terror suspects in Britain, to challenge their detention.

The ruling suggests British anti-terror policy requires urgent reform and the system of control orders, which allows suspects to be held under virtual house arrest without charge, trial or detail of what is alleged, may need to be scrapped.

The Sunday Times revealed at the weekend that the suspect was freed and his electronic tracking devices removed without explanation last week after he had spent 16 hours a day confined to his council flat over more than two years.

The man, identified only as AF, was one of three terrorism suspects who sought rulings from the British House of Lords on the legality of the control orders used to hold them. Despite the house arrest, no evidence for the allegations of suspicion of terrorist activities has been raised in public or in court.

The QC who led the legal team, Lord Pannick, called on Home Secretary Alan Johnson to explain exactly how the British Government came to conclude the man should be released.

He asked the Government to explain whether it now believed there was no need for the control order against AF or whether ''there is a need for the controls'' but the Government had decided it did not want to detail the allegations against the man.

The man, who lives with his father on the outskirts of Manchester, was informed by letter last week that the control order had been revoked and the electronic tag was immediately removed.

His solicitor, Carl Richmond, told the Sunday Times that the legal team would now seek to have the order quashed formally in the High Court: ''AF has always insisted that he has done nothing wrong. Clearly any evidence was such that the Home Secretary felt unable to disclose it. But we would argue that it was not material and could not have been relied upon in any case.''

The man spent his formative years in Libya with his father and sister, but returned to Britain in 2004 due to a feud between his family and the Gaddafi family. It was claimed he had links with Islamist extremists in Manchester, some affiliated with the proscribed organisation, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, but an earlier ruling by a British judge found that the nub of the case against him was contained in the closed, secret material.

During his house arrest, he was held under curfew, had to wear the tag at all times and even during non-curfew hours could not move beyond 23 square kilometres.

This is the second case of control orders that have been challenged in the High Court.

In the first case, a man known as AN, who was suspected of being a link between London-based and overseas-based al-Qaeda-linked extremists, had a new order imposed as soon as the old one finished.

The decision to release the latest man was revealed as British Prime Minister Gordon Brown spent the weekend trying to control the political damage caused by revelations that he had told IRA victims that it was not ''appropriate'' for him to help them seek compensation from Libya.

This seems to contradict earlier official responses to the victims of Semtex, the explosive used by the IRA and supplied by Libya.

This story was found at: http://www.theage.com.au/world/freedom-for-detained-uk-terror-suspect-20090907-febx.html