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UK to deport extremist Imams:Blair

July 14, 2005 02:03 IST

Prime Minister Tony Blair on Wednesday said anti-terror laws would be tightened and steps taken to deport radical Imams to prevent them from spreading the "evil and extreme ideology" based on a "perverted and poisonous misinterpretation of Islam."

Blair told a hushed House of Commons that police and security services had done "magnificent work" in the aftermath of the July 7 bombings which killed 52 people.

"This is not an isolated criminal we are dealing with. It is an extreme and evil ideology whose roots lie in a perverted and poisonous misinterpretation of the religion of Islam," he said. "We will seek to debate the right way forward in combatting this evil within the Muslim community with Muslim leaders and it is our intention to begin this process immediately," he added.

Blair said that in the next 14 days, proposals would be published to tighten the anti-terror laws - including the controversial control orders - which scraped its way into the statute book at the end of the last Parliament session. The focus would be on measures to combat the incitement and instigation of terrorism.

H S Rao in London
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