PARIS, 29 April 2004 — EU countries, reacting to the increased threat of attacks after the March 11 train bombings in Madrid, are looking at toughening anti-terrorist legislation to notably crack down on Muslim clerics deemed dangerous.
Britain, France and Germany have this week all said they were considering ways to reinforce their laws to handle militants their security services might judge threatening or troublesome.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair announced Tuesday a complete overhaul of his country’s immigration system, particularly to target “radical clerics coming here to preach religious hate, people staying here to peddle support for terrorism”.
It was the strongest words Blair has had for extremists who use London as a haven while issuing calls for a jihad against the West.
After the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, Britain adopted an anti-terrorist law that is probably the most severe in the European Union.
The text allows foreign suspects to be detained indefinitely without charge or trial in the interests of national security, unless they decide to return to their country of origin.
In April last year, the Home Office went further by saying that British citizenship would be rescinded in the case of immigrants deemed to seriously hurt British interests.
One imam suspected of links with Al-Qaeda, Abu Hamza Al-Masri, was stripped of his citizenship under the measure and deportation proceedings were started against him.
In France, the case of an Algerian imam who was deported after endorsing wife-beating in an interview — later judged illegal by an administrative tribunal — prompted Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin to Tuesday advocate similar powers being created.
Such beefed-up legislation was necessary because of Europe’s changed security environment after the March 11 train bombings in Madrid, de Villepin told Parliament.
He added that the imam, Abdelkader Bouziane, had flouted French law by saying wife-beating was acceptable and declaring he was polygamous.
He also said Bouziane “belonged to a movement whose extremist elements justified terrorism” even though that argument, backed by intelligence reports, failed to convince the tribunal. Germany, after Sept. 11, 2001, increased prison terms for those found guilty of supporting terrorism and widened its judicial definition of what constituted a terrorist organization.
Although its new laws do not permit detention without charges being laid, Interior Minister Otto Schily has said he envisaged “imprisoning for safety’s sake” suspects believed to be dangerous if they cannot be deported because of a risk of persecution in their native countries.
In Italy, authorities have used a power they have to deport foreigners deemed a threat, and in Spain laws originally used to fight Basque separatists have been invoked to lock up suspects, many of them Moroccans, tied to the March 11 bombings on three Madrid trains.
