Meera Selva, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Stumble Upon

del.icio.us

Digg

Facebook

Print

Email

Speak Up

LONDON - A British High Court judge on Friday criticized the government for moving a terror suspect from his home based on secret evidence under a house-arrest style program, ordering that the man be allowed to return to his residence in London.

In a separate case, the government agreed to give a Palestinian terrorism suspect travel documents allowing him to leave the country.

The British government had ordered that the first man - a British citizen who was identified only as BM - move from his London home to a one-bedroom apartment in the city of Leicester, 100 miles (160 kilometres) north, in an effort to prevent him from associating with extremist contacts and because it feared he might flee.

The government moved the suspect under its program of "control orders," which allows it to tell terror suspects where they can live, who they can talk to and when they may leave their house. The government gives all people in the program the opportunity to remain anonymous so their names cannot be revealed in court or in the media.

Justice John Mitting ruled the move infringed on the right of the 36-year-old man to occupy his own home, and that the government had refused to openly disclose the evidence on which it based its conclusions.

BM, who has five children under 11 years of age, is going through a divorce and divided his time between his mother's home and an apartment near his wife and children until the government moved him to Leicester in May.

Mitting said the move to Leicester deprived BM "of a civil right for a significant period."

Mitting's ruling was based on a decision handed down last month by Britain's highest court. The Law Lords ruled that prosecutors can no longer refuse to tell terror suspects held under the house-arrest style program why they are deemed a risk to national security.

Mitting said that because the government had not openly released the evidence in the terror suspect's case, it must allow him to return to London within seven days.

But Mitting also said that the government had disclosed some of its evidence against the man to him - and said he would have upheld the government's decision to move him if the law allowed him to do so. He could not take the evidence into account because it was not shown to the man's lawyers to use in their case.

The government is considering whether to appeal the decision, according to a spokesman for Britain's Home Office, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with government policy.

In another case at the High Court, the government agreed to grant travel documents to a Palestinian refugee who has spent years living under severe restrictions as a terror suspect in Britain.

Mahmoud Abu Rideh, 37, was arrested in 2001 and later released from detention on the condition he was electronically tagged and subject to nightly curfews.

Rideh has said the restrictions made his life intolerable, and threatened to commit suicide during one court hearing on his case.

After a morning of legal argument Friday, the Home Office said it would grant Rideh a "certificate of travel" so he could leave Britain. Rideh's lawyer, Gareth Peirce, said he hoped to have the document within two weeks.

"He has been in a state of complete despair," she said. "That despair has been somewhat alleviated today."