May vows to tear up human rights laws to tackle the terrorist threat
● If I am elected on Thursday, I will start work on Friday on new powers for police and security services, declares Prime Minister
Theresa May has signalled she is ready to rip up some human rights laws in order to crack down on the terrorist threat.
With two days to polling, the Prime Minister said she was determined to ensure the police and security services had the powers they needed to deal with violent extremists plotting attacks on Britain.
Addressing supporters at a rally in Slough, she said they could include new measures to restrict the movements of suspects who have not been convicted of any offence as well as making it easier to deport foreign suspects.
Senior Conservative sources indicated they were ready to opt out of the relevant provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) if powers to stop suspects using mobile phones and computers or to impose curfews needed to be toughened up.
The move came as Mrs May faced intense pressure over her record on security in the wake of the london bridge and Borough Market terror attack.
Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron accused her of “simply posturing”, having been prepared to offer up the police for “cut after cut” when she was home secretary.
In her speech to supporters, Mrs May said she would change any laws that prevented the police and security services from dealing effectively with the extremist threat. “As we see the threat
changing, evolving, becoming a more complex threat, we need to make sure that our police and security and intelligence agencies have the powers they need,” she said.
“I mean longer prison sentences for people convicted of terrorist offences.
“I mean making it easier for the authorities to deport foreign terrorist suspects back to their own countries.
“And I mean doing more to restrict the freedom and the movements of terrorist suspects when we have enough evidence to know they are a threat, but not enough evidence to prosecute them in full in court.
“And if our human rights laws stop us from doing it, we will change the laws so we can do it.
“If I am elected as prime minister on Thursday, that work begins on Friday.” Mrs May had already announced plans for longer prison sentences for terrorists and a clamp down on internet firms that enable access to extremist material, but she now wants to go further.
She will extend the powers of police and the courts to restrict the movements of ter- rorist suspects using Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures (Tpims).
Mrs May’s pledge came as pressure was mounting on Britain’s law enforcement agencies last night after it emerged Youssef Zaghba, the third perpetrator behind the London Bridge attack, had been placed on a watch list by authorities in Italy after Islamic State-related materials were discovered on his phone.
The details about the potential threat posed by the 22-year-old, named by Scotland Yard yesterday, came to light as Mrs May signalled a MI5 review would take place of the circumstances surrounding Saturday evening’s attack on the capital, which left seven people dead and 48 injured.
Zaghba, an Italian national of Moroccan descent, was reported to have been stopped at Bologna’s Marconi airport in March last year as he tried to board a plane to Turkey, en route to Syria.
Italian authorities placed him on a watch list and flagged up his presence to Moroccan and British counterparts, according to the Corriere della Sera newspaper.
However, Scotland Yard said Zaghba, who was living in east London and reportedly worked in a restaurant in the capital, “was not a police or MI5 subject of interest”.
The security services face intense scrutiny after it emerged another of the attackers, Khuram Butt, was known to them.
The 27-year-old, a Pakistanborn British citizen, was investigated by officers in 2015, but with no evidence he was planning an attack, he was prioritised in the “lower echelons” of investigative work.
The disclosure means that perpetrators in all three of the terror attacks on British soil in as many months had at some point appeared on the radar of security agencies.
During a visit to Bangor in North Wales, Mrs May said a review had been launched after the Manchester bombing last month and she expected the same process to be launched following Saturday’s rampage.
She said that she “recognised people’s concerns”, adding: “MI5 and the police have already said they would be reviewing how they dealt with Manchester and I would expect them to do exactly the same in relation to London Bridge.”
Butt, a father-of-two who appeared on Channel 4 documentary The Jihadis Next Door, was also reported to the anti-terror hotline in 2015 for showing signs of “extremism or radicalisation”.
He is alleged to have been an associate of jailed hate preacher Anjem Choudary. Mohammed Shafiq, chief executive of anti-extremism group, the Ramadhan Foundation, said Butt called him a “Murtad” – traitor in Arabic – when he confronted Choudary about supporting terrorism days after the 2013 murder of Lee Rigby.
Ash Siddique, the secretary of Al Madina Mosque in Barking, said concerns were raised about Butt on three occasions.
Former anti-terror laws watchdog Lord Carlile said: “I feel a sense of disappointment this morning that the perpetrator Butt slipped off the radar.
“In my view, we need to review what happened in his case, and learn the lessons so that the methodology of the response to known suspicions is improved.”
In Pakistan, police searched the former family home of Butt in the Mujahidabad area of Karachi, as well as a nearby restaurant, owned by his uncle.
Zaghba, Butt, and the third attacker, 30-year-old Rachid Redouane, who claimed to be Moroccanlibyan, killed pedestrians while travelling at speed in a van across London Bridge, before jumping out and stabbing people in nearby Borough Market.
All three were shot dead by armed police.
Last night 32 people remained in hospital, 15 in a critical condition.