Fury at Blunkett 'secret trials' plans

Home Secretary David Blunkett today unveiled controversial plans to tighten Britain's anti-terror laws.

He wants terror suspects to go on trial in secret, lower the burden of proof and bring in "pre-emptive" charges - before a crime is actually committed. Mr Blunkett put himself on a collision course with human rights groups, the judiciary and many in his own party. The plans would put suspects on trial using MI5 or MI6 intelligence of an expected terror attack. This would be enough to convict if found to be true "on the balance of probabilities", rather than "beyond reasonable doubt".

Suspects would be tried behind closed doors to protect "sensitive" evidence, and represented by state-appointed, security-vetted lawyers who would be banned from disclosing much of the evidence against their clients.

The powers would far exceed any taken during the IRA's Seventies mainland bombing campaign. Mr Blunkett wants to combine current anti-terror legislation with special powers he took after the September 11 atrocity to lock up indefinitely non-Britons suspected of terror plots.

He hopes to do so "before the general election".

He says that because suicide bombers are not deterred from committing attacks by being jailed afterwards, they have to be dealt with in advance. "I think we need to debate how we can amalgamate the Terrorism Act 2000 and the 2001 terrorism legislation - and deal with these delicate issues of proportionality and human rights on the one hand, and evidential base and the threshold of evidence on the other," Mr Blunkett said .

Such evidence needed "to be presented in a way that doesn't allow disclosure by any of the parties involved which would destroy your security services."

Mr Blunkett spoke while touring India, where he held talks with officials about anti-terrorism measures there, and said he plans to publish a "discussion paper" when he returns home.

Mark Littlewood, of human rights group Liberty, said British justice would be undermined without making the country safer.

Neil Durkin, of Amnesty International UK, said: "We would be extremely concerned at any further erosion of the right to receive a fair trial in the UK in the name of 'combating terrorism'.

"What is particularly worrying about these comments from the Home Secretary is the suggestion that there might be some wider introduction of internment-like measures that have already created a small-scale Guantanamo Bay in our own back yard by imprisoning 14 foreign nationals without charge or trial."

A spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain said: "It does not inspire confidence that a lot of this will be based on evidence from intelligence sources, in light of the intelligence blunders over weapons of mass destruction in Iraq."