Home Secretary Charles Clarke confirmed that he had exercised his powers under current laws to detain the seven men because he considered them to be a serious threat to the British public and to Britainâs national security. This, he added, was based on âsubstantive evidence in detailed submissionsâ against the seven North Africans provided to him by the police and intelligence services. The seven men are expected to be deported, subject to any appeal lodged by them. âAs, unfortunately, we saw in July, there are individuals who are going about the course of trying to threaten the civil liberties of this country by terrorist or potential terrorist attacks. To the extent we know about those... itâs our job to defend ourselves against that, as vigorously as we possibly can,â he explained in an interview with the BBC.Six of the men were among eight people acquitted in a trial in London in April this year of involvement in alleged ricin poison plots in London and in Manchester. The trial was discredited and could have saved the British taxpayer thousands of pounds because it took the governmentâs Porton Down laboratory 51 days to inform the police that there was no trace of ricin found in the flat of the suspects. Though none of the men have been charged under any criminal act, the Home Office confirmed that they were detained in âsecure prison service accommodationâ under the 1971 Immigration Act. A Home Office statement said: âWe can confirm that the Immigration Service detained seven individuals in accordance with the Home Secretaryâs powers to deport individuals whose presence in the UK is not conducive to the public good for reasons of national security. The Immigration Act 1971 grants powers to deport individuals and detain them pending deportation.â