Qatada: freedom with a tag

Eight terrorist suspects including radical Islamic cleric Abu Qatada are today set to walk free from prison.

A special court was meeting to impose strict bail conditions on the men, including night curfews, electronic tagging, regular searches of their homes and bans on mobile phone and computer use.

As they were preparing for release from Belmarsh and

Woodhill high-security jails, the high court judge presiding over the case ordered an extraordinary media blackout at the request of the men's lawyers.

No new photographs of the released detainees or their families may be published, and no details may be given of their new addresses. The men, all Islamic extremists accused of having links to al Qaeda, are the last detainees held under an emergency anti-terror law which expires at the weekend. They have been behind bars for up to three years.

Scotland Yard chief Sir Ian Blair has warned that every one of them remains "a grave threat to national security".

The bail conditions were being imposed under the current emergency law. If Parliament passes the Prevention of Terrorism Act today, Home Secretary Charles Clarke intends to impose new-style control orders on the released detainees next week.

It was unclear what the fate of the men would be if the new Act was not passed. Qatada, 44, has been called "al Qaeda's ambassador in Europe". The former Finsbury Park preacher's sermons are thought to have inspired terrorists including shoe bomber Richard Reid and some of the September 11 hijackers.

Palestinian Qatada has called for the murder of Jews and Americans wherever they are found. Last March the Special Immigration Appeals Commission chairman called him "a truly dangerous individual" and said he was "at the centre, in the UK, of terrorist activities associated with al Qaeda".

At one point 14 men were detained, mostly at Belmarsh, under the emergency law rushed through Parliament after 9/11.

By the start of this week the number had been reduced to 10. One, known only as A, was set free last night from Woodhill prison near Milton Keynes. Another, known as G, who was already under house arrest due to illness, had his bail conditions relaxed.