London: Tariqur Rehman, one of the 10 Pakistani students arrested on suspicion of being involved in plotting terrorist activities in the UK and then released for want of actionable evidence but facing deportation orders on national security grounds, returned home on Wednesday after authorities withdrew his deportation orders.
"Now he carries no 'terror' stigma any more and we assume that the Pakistani authorities too would have no cause to detain him on his arrival for interrogation," one of the solicitors defending the students said. Meanwhile, bail applications of other nine Pakistani students in appeal against their deportation orders are likely to get a positive boost when they come up for hearing on July 27 by a landmark ruling on Wednesday by the law lords.
The ruling is said to have dealt a major blow to the government's controversial use of 'control orders' on terror suspects. The ruling said that reliance on secret evidence denies the suspects a fair trial.
The nine-judge panel led by Lord Philips of Worth Matravers, the senior law lord, upheld a challenge on behalf of three men (not among the detained Pakistani students) on 'control orders'.
Control orders imposed on individual suspects by the home secretary can include home curfews of up to 16 hours a day, a ban on travelling abroad, the approval of all visitors by the Home Office, monitoring of all phone calls, and bans on using the internet and mobile phones.
The orders have not been quashed but the law lords have ordered that the cases be heard again.
The three had argued that the refusal to disclose even the "gist" of the evidence against them denied them a fair trial under the Human Rights Act.
In the ruling, Lord Philips said: "A trial procedure can never be considered fair if a party to it is kept in ignorance of the case against him."
Lord Hope said "the slow creep of complacency must be resisted" and that to protect the rule of law, courts must insist the person affected be told what was alleged against him.
These observations are likely to help the solicitors defending the Pakistani students facing deportation orders as in their cases as well the authorities are not willing to disclose what is alleged against them.
A report in The Guardian on Wednesday quoted Home Secretary Alan Johnson as saying that the judgment was extremely disappointing. "Protecting the public is my top priority and this judgment makes that task harder," he said. "Nevertheless, the government will continue to take all steps we can to manage the threat presented by terrorism." Dawn
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