Decision day for al Qaeda suspects

The Government's anti-terrorist measures face fresh scrutiny today with a court ruling on nine al Qaeda suspects who have been imprisoned without trial for up to eight months.

The men, who are being treated as high-risk Category A prisoners, are being held on Home Secretary David Blunkett's personal orders at the high security prisons Belmarsh, in southeast London, and Woodhill in Buckinghamshire.

The suspects - who cannot be named - are being held indefinitely under the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act which was rushed through Parliament in the wake of 11 September. None of the detainees has been questioned by police or security services since their arrest, prompting protests from lawyers and civil liberties campaigners.

Today they will learn whether Mr Blunkett's new detention powers are lawful when a panel of three senior judges give a ruling which could see the men make immediate bids to be freed from prison.

The development comes a day after asylum seeker Yasser Al Siri, accused of funding Osama Bin Laden's terror network in Britain, walked free from Bow Street magistrates court after the Home Office said it had insufficient evidence to extradite him to the US.

Egyptian born Al Siri, 39, said: "America was not happy with me because I condemned America and what they do. This is a fabricated case." Al Siri, who runs the Islamic Observation Centre in west London, was accused of supplying money to al Qaeda via Ahmed Abdel Rahman, who was jailed for plotting the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing.

But his lawyer, Ben Emerson, claimed his client's centre merely organised small donations - a few hundred pounds or less - to the families of Islamic prisoners held around the world.

The lawyer acting for two of the nine suspects being held, Natalia Garcia-Lorn, said: "They are in an awful vacuum. The psychological effect of not knowing how long they are going to be detained has had a terrible effect, and not knowing what the allegations are has left them feeling completely powerless."

The men were denied family visits for months, waited weeks without telephone calls, and are sometimes kept in single cells for 22 hours a day, lawyers say.

They are also strip-searched before and after every visit because of their security status. The Home Office denies they have been "left to rot" and says they are treated with more flexibility than other Category A prisoners and receive more legal visits than other prisoners.

The key issue being considered by the judges today is whether the Government was right to declare a state of "public emergency threatening the life of the nation" so that terrorist suspects could be held without trial. The Government had to opt out of Article 5 of the European Convention on Human Rights which is supposed to protect people from arbitrary detention and imprisonment.

Mr Blunkett insists his paramount responsibility is to ensure public safety and national security, but lawyers acting for human rights group Liberty have claimed the new powers are unlawful and point out that no other European country has taken such a step in the wake of 11 September. Intelligence sources say one barrier to prosecution is the fact that evidence from telephone interception cannot be used in court. There are also concerns that other anti-terrorist investigations would be jeopardised if evidence was given in open court.

Mr Blunkett has told Parliament he suspects each of the men are international terrorists and "a risk to national security" but after some of them have spent 223 days locked up without trial, little is known publicly about the men because they have obtained court orders to protect their identities.

Lawyers say the men, who all claim to have been fleeing persecution in the Middle East, want to remain anonymous to protect family members who could be targeted by repressive regimes.

One of the nine men is a French Algerian who had been acquitted at the Old Bailey in March 2000 of conspiracy to provide material support to the Armed Islamic Group.

Another is a mentally disturbed 30-year-old Palestinian, who has been on hunger strike since April and is said to be so weak he is in a wheelchair in Belmarsh hospital wing. The three men at Woodhill and six at Belmarsh were all at varying stages of asylum cases. Some had been granted refugee status, others had been given permission to stay in the UK for up to four years. Some were still awaiting decisions on asylum claims and others were awaiting the results of appeals.

Under the new law, they have all been stripped of their right to seek asylum. Before the emergency laws came in, the Government had the power to deport any foreigner whose presence was not conducive to the public good, but existing law meant it was impossible to deport people to countries where they might face death or torture.

The new law gave the Government the right to jail people indefinitely, although each of the detainees is free to leave the UK at any time if they can find a country willing to accept them. Two of the 11 men arrested under the new powers have exercised that right. All of the nine will appeal if today's judgment from the Special Immigration Appeals Commission goes in favour of the Government.