Thread: Blair: UK Will Deport Extremists

Blair Vows To Deport Extremists
August 5, 2005


Prime Minister Tony Blair on Friday announced new deportation measures against people who foster hatred and advocate violence following last month's transportation attacks that killed 52 people and four suspected suicide bombers.

Clerics who preach hate and Web sites or book shops that sponsor violence would be targeted. Foreign nationals could be deported under the new measures.

The announcement came a day after a top al Qaeda leader blamed Blair for the London bombings and warned that more destruction lay ahead for Britain and the United States.

Blair said his government was prepared to amend human rights legislation if necessary if legal challenges arose from the new deportation measures.

Britain's ability to deport foreign nationals has been hampered by human rights legislation. As a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights, Britain is not allowed to deport people to a country where they may face torture or death.

"Let no one be in any doubt that the rules of the games are changing," Blair said, promising to crack down on extremists blamed for radicalizing pockets of Muslim youth.

By the year's end, Blair wants to pass legislation that would outlaw "indirect incitement" of terrorism — targeting extremist Islamic clerics who glorify acts of terrorism and seduce impressionable Muslim youth.

The law would ban receiving training in terrorist techniques in Britain or abroad. A new offense of "acts preparatory to terrorism" would outlaw planning an attack and activities such as acquiring bomb-making instructions on the Internet.

Blair said his government would hold a short, one-month consultation on new grounds for excluding and deporting people from the United Kingdom.

"The Muslim community have been and are our partners in this endeavor," said Blair, who has appealed to community leaders to help roots out extremists in their midst.

On Thursday, Al-Jazeera television broadcast a tape by Ayman al-Zawahri, al Qaeda's No. 2 leader, in which he blamed the London attacks on Blair's decision to deploy and keep troops in Iraq. Britain maintains 8,500 forces mainly in southern Iraq.

"Blair has brought to you destruction in central London, and he will bring more of that, God willing," al-Zawahri said in the tape, which was excerpted by the pan-Arab satellite channel.

Al-Zawahri also promised tens of thousands of U.S. casualties in Iraq, and renewed threats against other countries with troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, claiming they had shunned Osama bin Laden's offer last year of a truce if they left the battleground.

"What you have seen in New York and Washington, you Americans, and the losses you see in Afghanistan and Iraq — despite all the media blackout are merely the losses from the initial clashes," he said.

"If you go on with the same policy of aggression against Muslims, you will see, God willing, what will make you forget the horrible things in Vietnam," he said.

CBS News Correspondent Mark Knoller reports that in Crawford, Texas, President Bush said the latest threats from al-Zawahri make it clear that Iraq is part of a war on terror. He said al Qaeda is trying to force the United States out of Iraq, but it won't succeed.

Mr. Bush dismissed al-Zawahri's threat, saying, "We will stay on the offense against these people. They're terrorists and they're killers and they will kill innocent people ... so they can impose their dark vision on the world."

In London, a sea of 6,000 police flooded the streets and the Underground, CBS' Aleen Sirgany (video) reports, but the security hike was explained to the public as unrelated to the terror warning. The massive security operation Thursday was said to be intended to reassure the public one month after the July 7 bombings and two weeks after the failed July 21 attacks.

Officials stressed there was no specific intelligence of a third attack, but undercover police were mingling with passengers, and officers were armed with machine guns and pistols. Police helicopters hovered above while traffic was heavier than normal.

British police investigating the botched July 21 subway attack said Thursday they had charged two women under anti-terror laws.

Weshshiembet Girma, 29, and Muluemebet Girma, 21, of separate addresses in south London, were charged with failing to disclose information that could have helped police secure the arrest, prosecution or conviction of a person involved in terrorism, a Metropolitan Police spokeswoman said.

Press Association reported that the women are sisters and that both were arrested on July 27, accused of failing to disclose the required information between July 21 and July 28.

They are the second and third persons to be charged in Britain in connection with the failed July 21 bombings on London's subways.

The first person charged, Ismael Abdurahman, 23, from southeast London, appeared in court Thursday to face charges of withholding information that helped suspected subway bomber Hamdi Issac avoid capture.

London police are continuing to detain 12 other suspects without charge.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/...in759985.shtml