18hr control orders 'unfair'
Control orders have been criticised by civil liberties groups
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Wednesday, 31, Oct 2007 07:53
Imposing an 18-hour curfew on terror suspects breaches human rights, Britain's most senior judges have ruled.
Law lords did not declare the government's controversial control orders policy completely illegal, however.
Control orders, imposed by the home secretary, are a central facet of the government's anti-terror stance.
Under the system - imposed in March 2005 as a means of detaining British and foreign terror suspects without imprisoning them - the Home Office is able to impose daily curfews and restrictions on a subject's movement and meetings.
Electronic tagging is frequently used as well as telephone and internet usage being banned.
In today's series of rulings in the House of Lords, law lords raised concerns about the procedural implications in some of the cases under scrutiny.
They said 18-hour curfews were unacceptable but said 12-hour curfews could be maintained.
Home secretary Jacqui Smith told BBC News 24 she was pleased control orders had been broadly upheld.
While civil liberties were "crucial", her top priority was national security, she said.
Ms Smith added that no existing control orders would have to be revised and said the government would look at ways in which curfews of up to 16 hours could be possible.
Recent Home Office figures show that 14 people are currently subject to control orders, eight of whom are British.
Lord Carlile, the government's independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, had urged the government to pursue prosecution over control orders, describing some of them as falling "not very far short of house arrest".
The government had appealed the cases after the ten men had argued in the high court and court of appeal that the measures are a restriction of their liberty.