Britain's top legal official on Friday defended plans to deport a radical Muslim cleric and nine other foreigners, suspected of posing a threat to national security despite claims by human rights campaigners that they could face torture in the countries they are sent to.
Lord Chancellor Charles Falconer said it was necessary to balance the risk of a deportee being mistreated against the threat they pose to Britain. He added that the government may seek to amend human rights legislation to make the deportations easier. The measure would be among a raft of tough new anti-terrorism laws announced in the wake of the July bombings.
"The deportee has got rights, but so have the people of this country," Falconer told British Broadcasting Corporation radio.
"If they are threatened in terms of national security, that is something that the government has got to protect them against as much as possible."
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Also on Friday, Britain said it had barred radical Muslim cleric Omar Bakri from returning to the country. The cleric traveled to Lebanon last week and was arrested by police there. He had faced possible incitement charges in Britain for comments he made in the wake of the July 7 bombings. The Home Office said he would be barred from returning.
Meanwhile, as a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights, Britain is not allowed to deport people to countries where they may face torture of mistreatment. The government has been trying to sign agreements guaranteeing humane treatment of deportees with 10 countries, including Algeria, Lebanon, Egypt and Tunisia.
The first such memorandum of understanding was signed with Jordan on Wednesday.
Radical Muslim cleric Omar Mahmoud Othman Abu Omar, also known as Abu Qatada, was among 10 foreigners detained in early morning raids Thursday. British officials have previously described Abu Qatada as Osama bin Laden's "spiritual ambassador in Europe."
The detentions came days after Prime Minister Tony Blair announced tough new proposals to deport Islamic extremists, and are another indication of the dramatic impact of last month's bombings in a country until recently regarded as something of a safe haven for radicals.
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"The circumstances of our national security have changed, it is vital that we act against those who threaten it," Home Secretary Charles Clarke said in a statement.
The Home Office did not identify the detainees. But a government official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, confirmed that Abu Qatada was among them.
The Palestinian cleric, who carries a Jordanian passport, was granted political asylum in Britain in 1993. He has been in jail or under close supervision here since 2002, but now faces deportation to Jordan where authorities convicted him in absentia in 1998 and again in 2000 for involvement in a series of explosions and terror plots.
British authorities believe Abu Qatada inspired the lead Sept 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta and he is suspected of having links with radical groups across Europe.
The cleric's lawyer, Gareth Peirce, condemned the detentions. Her firm said in a statement that the detainees had not been allowed to see their lawyers. Like Abu Qatada, some of the foreigners detained Thursday had spent up to three years in jail without trial under sweeping anti-terror legislation until their release in March after Britain's highest court ruled the detentions unlawful. Since then, they have been supervised under so-called control orders, such as curfew or house arrest, and banned from using the telephone or Internet.
The home office said detainees had five working days to appeal against deportation--a process that could drag on for months. A spokeswoman insisted they would not be deported until the British government gained assurances from the countries, to which they will be sent, that the deportees will not be treated inhumanely.
Civil rights campaigners and United Nations special envoy on torture Manfred Nowak have warned, however, that such assurances carry no weight in international law and would not sufficiently protect the deportees.
"The assurances of known torturers, many of whom deny the use of torture even when it is widely documented, are not worth the paper they are written on," said Mike Blakemore, a spokesman for Amnesty International.
