Civil rights may thwart emergency crackdown
BORIS Johnson last night faced a legal battle to stop the early release of terrorists from prison following the Streatham knife attack.
Civil rights groups signalled they could challenge the Prime Minister’s proposed emergency laws to scrap automatic early release halfway through a jail term for more than 200 offenders currently behind bars.
Government officials also declined to rule out the possibility of the UK temporarily withdrawing from the European Court of Human Rights to keep prisoners locked up.
Ministers are expected to introduce fast-track legislation into Parliament within the next 10 days to block early release.
Under the proposed law, terrorists will only become eligible for early release after serving two-thirds of their jail terms and will not be let out unless the Parole Board agrees. But critics claimed changing the rules for inmates currently serving sentences could be against the law and breach their human rights. Clare Collier, a director at civil rights group Liberty, branded the Government proposal “dangerous”.
She said: “It’s clear the UK’s counter-terror system is in chaos and desperately needs proper scrutiny and review.”
Labour frontbencher Baroness Chakrabarti also expressed concerns but she added: “I do not support changing people’s sentences but there is a grey area about what is the fundamental part of the sentence and what is the administration of the sentence.
“It’s really for the Government to construct that to make it defensible in the court.”
However, Cabinet minister Michael Gove suggested that some terrorists should be detained indefinitely
“if necessary”.
He said: “If you have people who are in the grip of an ideology that means they want to kill innocent people to advance a religious view...they are a danger to society.”