UK Government fails in battle over anti-terror powers

LONDON - The British government failed in a legal bid on Tuesday to resurrect anti-terrorism powers that were thrown out in court in June.

The Court of Appeal refused to allow the government to appeal against a High Court ruling that threw out "control orders" - enacted by Prime Minister Tony Blair to put terrorism suspects under partial house arrest.

The ruling came on the day the government unveiled a new security alert system which said Britain was at "severe" risk of a terrorist attack, its second highest level of threat.

Blair rushed the control orders through parliament after courts threw out emergency post-September 11 powers to jail foreign terrorism suspects indefinitely.

The orders, which apply to suspects who have not been charged with a crime, have been a key plank in Blair's security policy. They can force people to stay in their homes for most of the day and deny them the right to meet people or use computers or telephones without government permission.

Judge Jeremy Sullivan threw the powers out in June, ruling that orders against six men broke the European Convention of Human Rights by depriving them of liberty without trial.

The appeal court, led by England's top judge Lord Chief Justice Nicholas Phillips, said Sullivan was right.

"We agree that the facts of this case fall clearly on the wrong side of the dividing line; the orders amounted to a deprivation of liberty," they wrote.

"Clearly and correctly Mr Justice Sullivan took as his starting point the physical restriction that confined each respondent to a small flat for 18 hours a day.

"Such a restriction makes most serious inroads on liberty, even giving that word its most narrow meaning."

The government did win a separate ruling, however, overturning a judgment by Sullivan that hearings about control orders at a secret tribunal were unfair.

Home Secretary John Reid said he would "reluctantly" issue new, less severe orders against the six men and would appeal to the House of Lords, Britain's highest court and upper house of parliament.

"I intend to appeal against today's judgment ... not least because I am concerned about its effects on public safety. We are at a sustained high level of threat -- put simply an attack is highly likely," Reid said in a statement.

The less-severe orders "are not as stringent as the security services believe are necessary", he said.

The government argues that it sometimes needs to restrain terrorism suspects to prevent them from carrying out attacks, even if it does not have enough evidence to convict them.

Human rights groups, and, increasingly the courts, say those powers ignore ancient rights and break European law.

- REUTERS