Blunkett terror laws ‘an affront to the rule of law’

NEW terror laws proposed by British Home Secretary David Blunkett were yesterday described as shameful by a leading Labour peer.

Mr Blunkett has proposed locking up terror suspects on the basis of intelligence given at secret trials.

The threat is now so great the burden of proof should be reduced from beyond reasonable doubt to the balance of probabilities, he said.

But the proposals drew a stinging response from Baroness Kennedy, who compared the home secretary to brutal Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe.

“He really is a shameless authoritarian,” said the lawyer who was appointed a peer by Prime Minister Tony Blair in 1997.

She accused the home secretary of playing games by talking up the Draconian nature of the plans in “a classic Blunkett tactic”.

“You suggest all kinds of outrageous and awful things because then you get away with half of them,” she said.

“You set people up for something awful and then they are relieved when they don’t get the worst possible scenario. But it is terrible and even half of it would be a disgrace, she said”

Lady Kennedy added: “We can be confident many of his colleagues in the cabinet, including particularly the attorney general, will sit on this, because it really is an affront to the rule of law.”

And she said the proposals were particularly untimely given questions over the accuracy of intelligence on Iraq.

They were set out in a discussion paper that could see “pre-emptive” trials presided over by judges vetted by the secret services of MI5, MI6 and GCHQ.

Lawyers defending the accused would also have to be vetted and some evidence withheld from them to stop sensitive information leaking back to defendants and terror groups.

Defendants could also be found guilty on weaker evidence than normal. The plans horrified civil rights and Muslim groups.

Chairman of the Islam Human Rights Commission Massoud Shadjareh said: “This is the sort of legislation that in Germany led to genocide and to concentration camps.”