Loose ends aid criminal escapes in Britain

LONDON: Britain's interior ministry faced fresh embarrassment on Wednesday after an international terror suspect supposedly under strict supervision absconded - the third to do so in less than six months.

Home Secretary John Reid told parliament on Tuesday that the individual disappeared earlier this month while subject to a control order, a loose form of house arrest that the government introduced controversially in 2005.

Britain, the United States' closest ally in the global fight against terrorism, has been on high alert since July 2005 suicide bombings on the London transport system that left 56 people dead.

The revelation about the latest escape came less than a week after Reid's department admitted it overlooked 275,000 files on Britons convicted abroad whose details should have been entered onto criminal record databases.

BBC radio said the restrictions were similar to control orders for security suspects and would be imposed by civil court judges - where there is a lower burden of proof - limiting movements, business activity and even Internet use.

The Conservative Party has made much of what it views as Home Office failings after a series of blunders, including one last May in which hundreds of convicted foreign criminals disappeared after their release from prison.

The Times newspaper said that he was a British-born 26-year-old of Pakistani origin who lived in Manchester, north-west England. He evaded police by taking refuge in a mosque before escaping abroad after claiming he wanted to attend terrorist training camps in Afghanistan, the daily said.   

Control orders were brought in after judges ruled that holding foreign security suspects indefinitely in prison without charge or trial - as happened after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States - was unlawful.

The government has consistently argued that control orders are second-best while civil liberties groups say they undermine the presumption of innocence and the right to a fair trial.