Evidence presented to the Home Office by British intelligence agency MI5 and Scotland Yardâs Anti-Terrorist Branch, according to the London Evening Standard yesterday, pointed to direct links between some of the detainees and Al-Qaeda and its financing.Eight of the ten detainees are Algerians who have been granted asylum in the UK over the last few years. There are believed to belong to a cell operated by Abu Doha, who is in British custody pending extradition proceedings to the US over an alleged plot in 1999 to attack Los Angeles International Airport. The Abu Doha cell is also accused of planning a ricin poison attack on the London tube system and plans to attack popular tourist sites in the West End.
According to the report, the evidence against some of the detainees is clear and overwhelming. One Algerian was an explosives expert who taught at an Al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan. Another sponsored young British Muslims to travel to Afghanistan for training.
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The ten detainees have already started appeals proceedings against the detention and deportations. Legal sources say that the eventual cost to the taxpayer of expelling then detainees could exceed 5 million pounds. This would depend on how long the appeal process takes. Gareth Peirce, the lawyer who represents most of the detainees, said that the appeals could be drawn out to up to three years.
However, Clarkeâs measures includes ways of speeding up the legal process for deportations. Despite the âstrongâ evidence and the sweeping measures announced on Wednesday by Home Secretary Charles Clarke including a list of âunacceptable behaviorsâ by foreigners which Britian would not tolerate anymore, some of the radicals are effectively challenging the might of the British state.
One Yasser Al-Sirri, an Egyptian convicted for the murder of a six-year-old girl who died in a bomb blast in Cairo, yesterday mocked Clarkeâs measures saying that the British courts would never allow detainees to be deported to Middle East countries where they would be certainly tortured and abused. âI am not worried about expulsion,â boasted Al-Siri yesterday in an interview in the Evening Standard, âMy legal team thinks it is impossible. I donât think any British judge can accept any agreement between the UK and any Middle Eastern country like Egypt. Any judge here can take this agreement and throw it in the rubbish basket. I still trust the UK with human rights, while Tony Blair may want to change the laws, there is still the Magna Carta.â