Terror suspects set to challenge Clarke's use of control orders
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Lawyers for 10 foreign terror suspects released from prison are to challenge the Home Secretary's power to make them comply with control orders that unfairly restrict their movements in the community.
Implementation of the new anti-terror regime has left some of the former detainees without food or outside help. Others live in fear that they may be sent back to prison for unwittingly breaching the new rules.
Later this week Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, will ask a High Court judge to confirm his decision to issue control orders against former detainees at Belmarsh and Woodhill prisons and Broadmoor hospital. At a later hearing lawyers for the men are expected to ask the court to revoke the orders because they are unworkable and breach human rights law.
P, a double upper-limb amputee from Algeria who was released from Broadmoor hospital at the weekend, was left without food and contact with the outside world. A spokesman for Birnberg Peirce and partners, the law firm representing most of the men, said that police had to break down his door to let him into to his new home.
"He is supposed to use a fixed telephone to call the monitoring company every time he leaves or enters his house. But he has no arms and no one seems to have thought about adapting the phone to his special needs," said the spokesman.
A spokeswoman for the Home Office said the orders were served by the Home Secretary as emergency "interim orders" which require "confirmation by a High Court judge within days. If the High Court judge confirms the orders the case will progress to a full hearing as soon as possible."
* Two former detainees at Guantanamo Bay delivered a petition to the Home Office yesterday demanding the release of five UK residents still held in the camp. Martin Mubanga and Moazzam Begg handed over the 3,500-signature petition at Mr Clarke's office ahead of an anti-war rally in London on Saturday. Mr Mubanga's lawyer said her client was not allowed to speak freely to the media under anti-terrorism measures and has had his passport withdrawn.