UK to review control orders after suspects escape

LONDON, Oct 17 (Reuters) Britain said today it would review controversial ''control orders'' used to limit the movement of terrorism suspects after it was revealed that two men held under the system had gone on the run.

Media reports said one man, accused of wanting to go to Iraq to fight, had been missing for two weeks after escaping from a London mental health unit, while another had disappeared some months previously.

Control orders were rushed through parliament under last year's Prevention of Terrorism Act after judges threw out emergency post-September 11 powers to jail foreign terrorism suspects indefinitely.

The measures, which form a key plank of Prime Minister Tony Blair's government security policy, allow the Home Secretary to order suspects to be placed under a range of measures from electronic tagging, surveillance and even house arrest.

They are applied to terrorism suspects that Britain is unable to deport due to concerns about possible mistreatment in their homeland and cannot put on trial because there is not enough admissible evidence to use in UK courts.

In June Britain's High Court ruled that the orders imposed against suspects were too severe and broke the European Convention of Human Rights because it deprived them of their liberty without trial.

The Home Office was forced to issue less stringent orders but vowed to appeal to Britain's highest court, the House of Lords, to review the decision.

Home Office minister Tony McNulty said control orders were always a ''second best'' option.

''We'll keep this under review, we have provision in the law for a different form of control orders and at this stage we don't rule either in or out,'' he told BBC television.

Civil rights campaigners said news of the men's escape showed the system was flawed.

''They are both unsafe and fundamentally unfair,'' said Shami Chakrabati, the director of Liberty. ''If someone is truly a dangerous terrorist suspect why would you leave them at large? ''On the other hand it is completely cruel and unfair to label someone a terrorist and to subject them to a range of punishments for years on end without ever charging them or putting them on trial.'' The BBC said the most recent escapee, who cannot be named for legal reasons but is in his twenties, had climbed out of a window from the mental health unit.

It said he was arrested in Pakistan last year where he was held for seven months before returning to Britain in January.

In March a control order was imposed, requiring him to report to police every day and surrender his passport.

Opposition Conservatives said the escape was ''extraordinary''.

''The government justified control orders on the basis of protecting the public from potentially dangerous terrorists,'' said opposition Conservative home affairs spokesman David Davis.

''It is therefore hard to understand how this man was allowed to escape, especially while undergoing psychiatric assessment.'' Reuters SP DB1228