Britain Proposes Easing Controls on Terrorism Suspects to Calm Rights Concerns

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Source: The New York Times

LONDON — For years, Britain has struggled with its own version of the American debate over the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba: how best to deal with individuals regarded as terrorist threats who cannot readily be brought to trial, usually because of concern that important evidence would compromise intelligence sources.

Britain has no Guantánamo equivalent. But it has a major terrorism problem, with a network of Qaeda-linked extremists spread across the country, and its security services running dozens of investigations at any given time into possible attacks. It has found, under two governments, that some suspects are beyond effective prosecution, or deportation, leaving it to hold some indefinitely under “control orders,” an extended version of house arrest.

On Wednesday, the legal dilemmas involved came into sharp focus when the government of Prime Minister David Cameron unveiled new measures aimed at easing some controls on terrorism suspects in the hope of at least partly meeting the objections of human rights activists who have said that the existing system breaches Britain’s centuries-old traditions of civil liberties.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/27/world/europe/27britain.html

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1. It's more about calming the Liberal Democrats

The junior partners in the coalition government. They've lost a LOT of credibility from their abandoning key elements of their manifesto such as dropping all opposition to tuition fees and as such they are need of concessions to stop all their supporters from jumping ship in disgust.