Blair seeks wartime powers for police
Mon, 28 May 2007
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British Prime Minister Tony Blair plans to push for a new anti-terrorism law before he steps down giving wartime powers to police.
Blair, who is due to step down on June 27 after a decade in office, wrote in an article in The Sunday Times that his government planned to publish new anti-terrorism proposals "within the next few weeks".
An interior ministry spokeswoman confirmed the government was looking at a "stop and question" power in the new legislation. "We are considering a range of powers for the bill and 'stop and question' is one of them," she said.
The "stop and question" power would enable police to interrogate people about who they are, where they have been and where they were going, The Sunday Times said. Police would not need to suspect a crime had taken place.
If suspects failed to stop or refused to answer questions, they could be charged with a crime and fined, The Sunday Times said. Police already have the power to stop and search people but have no right to ask them their identity and movements.
The new law comes after three suspects disappeared last week.
Writing in The Sunday Times, Blair argued that the disappearance of three terror suspects under control orders, a form of house arrest, was due to society's mixed-up priorities rather than government mistakes.
"The fault is not with our services or, in this instance, with the Home Office (interior ministry). We have chosen as a society to put the civil liberties of the suspect, even if a foreign national, first," Blair wrote.
The proposal has received a volley of criticism, with a member of Blair's own cabinet joining the skeptics.
Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain, who is running for the Labor party deputy leadership, warned that the move could become "the domestic equivalent of Guantanamo Bay".
Shami Chakrabarti, of civil rights campaigners Liberty, accused Blair of "political machismo, a legacy moment."
"Stopping and questioning anyone you like will backfire," she said.
The Sunday Times said the powers already existed in Northern Ireland. Civil rights groups viewed the plan to extend them to the rest of Britain as an attack on civil liberties, it said.
Such powers had existed before in other parts of Britain only in wartime, it said.
Interior Minister John Reid is proposing other measures to combat terrorists, the report said. These would give police the power to take documents away for examination, even if their value as evidence was not immediately obvious, and the power to remove vehicles to examine them.
Blair's government passed tough anti-terrorism measures after the September 11, 2001, attacks on US cities and again after four British suicide bombers killed 52 people on London's transport network in July 2005.
Blair, who is due to step down on June 27 after a decade in office, wrote in an article in The Sunday Times that his government planned to publish new anti-terrorism proposals "within the next few weeks".
An interior ministry spokeswoman confirmed the government was looking at a "stop and question" power in the new legislation. "We are considering a range of powers for the bill and 'stop and question' is one of them," she said.
The "stop and question" power would enable police to interrogate people about who they are, where they have been and where they were going, The Sunday Times said. Police would not need to suspect a crime had taken place.
If suspects failed to stop or refused to answer questions, they could be charged with a crime and fined, The Sunday Times said. Police already have the power to stop and search people but have no right to ask them their identity and movements.
The new law comes after three suspects disappeared last week.
Writing in The Sunday Times, Blair argued that the disappearance of three terror suspects under control orders, a form of house arrest, was due to society's mixed-up priorities rather than government mistakes.
"The fault is not with our services or, in this instance, with the Home Office (interior ministry). We have chosen as a society to put the civil liberties of the suspect, even if a foreign national, first," Blair wrote.
The proposal has received a volley of criticism, with a member of Blair's own cabinet joining the skeptics.
Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain, who is running for the Labor party deputy leadership, warned that the move could become "the domestic equivalent of Guantanamo Bay".
Shami Chakrabarti, of civil rights campaigners Liberty, accused Blair of "political machismo, a legacy moment."
"Stopping and questioning anyone you like will backfire," she said.
The Sunday Times said the powers already existed in Northern Ireland. Civil rights groups viewed the plan to extend them to the rest of Britain as an attack on civil liberties, it said.
Such powers had existed before in other parts of Britain only in wartime, it said.
Interior Minister John Reid is proposing other measures to combat terrorists, the report said. These would give police the power to take documents away for examination, even if their value as evidence was not immediately obvious, and the power to remove vehicles to examine them.
Blair's government passed tough anti-terrorism measures after the September 11, 2001, attacks on US cities and again after four British suicide bombers killed 52 people on London's transport network in July 2005.
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