("Newton Committee") and Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights have rightly emphasized that the threat from terrorism should be met through the criminal justice system.
Notably absent from the Bill are any measures that would facilitate prosecution, including the widely-supported relaxation on the ban on intercept evidence in court proceedings. "The government complains that it cannot prosecute all those who pose a risk, because key evidence cannot be revealed in court. And yet, instead of addressing that problem, the Government seems determined yet again to resort to authoritarian shortcuts," said Denber.
Human Rights Watch is also concerned about the second track of the government’s new counter-terrorism strategy-the deportation of foreign terrorism suspects at risk of torture to North Africa on the basis of no-torture promises from the governments in the countries of return. Foreign Office Minister Baroness Symons recently visited Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia to discuss the return of terrorism suspects with "diplomatic assurances." Experience shows that these assurances are an ineffective safeguard against torture. The Swedish government relied on diplomatic assurances to return to two Egyptian nationals to Cairo, where they were held in incommunicado detention and subjected to torture.
The briefing paper, Commentary on Prevention of Terrorism Bill 2005, can be found at: http://hrw.org/backgrounder/eca/uk0305/

Human Rights Watch
02 - 03 - 2005