LONDON, 16 September 2005 — British police accompanied by officers from the Immigration Service detained seven Algerians in dawn raids yesterday in London and Manchester in the continuing war against terrorism and extremism in the aftermath of the 7/7 suicide bombings and the failed 21/7 attacks on the London transport system.

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 Britain’s national security. This, he added, was based on “substantive evidence in detailed submissions” 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. “As, 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... it’s our job to defend ourselves against that, as vigorously as we possibly can,” 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 government’s 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 “secure prison service accommodation” under the 1971 Immigration Act.

A Home Office statement said: “We can confirm that the Immigration Service detained seven individuals in accordance with the Home Secretary’s 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.”

Last month, the British authorities used similar powers to detain another 10 foreign nationals, including firebrand Jordanian cleric Abu Qatada, said to pose a threat to national security and whose presence in the UK was “not conducive to the public good”. Abu Qatada is often described, as “Al-Qaeda’s ambassador-at-large in Europe”.

Another Algerian, Kamel Bourgass, 31, was found guilty of plotting to spread ricin and other poisons on UK streets at the Old Bailey trial in April and jailed for 17 years. He is also serving a sentence for the murder of a policeman.

The detentions came on a day when Home Secretary Charles Clarke published a draft anti-terror bill seeking cross-party consensus with the aim of getting the tough new legislation through the House of Commons as quickly as possible in the aftermath of the 7/7 bombings in London in which 56 people died. The bill includes new offences of incitement to and glorification of terrorism; “acts preparatory to terrorism; and giving or receiving terrorist training.

One of the more controversial provisions in the bill, however, is the extension of the time police can hold terror suspects for questioning from the current two weeks to three months without charging them.

The provision comes after the Association of Chief Police Officers lobbied ministers saying that they cannot unravel evidence in a few days in an era of computer encryption, hi-tech banking and electronic communications. The provision will give officers the time they need to establish a case against suspects, often involving time-consuming investigation of computer files and CCTV records, and thus pre-empt premature decisions as to whether to charge or free a suspect.

Another is the prosecution of Islamist bookshops that sell books and pamphlets praising and glorifying terrorism — directly or indirectly. “The celebration of despicable terrorist acts in the past few weeks has only served to inflame already sensitive community relations in the UK,” warned the Home Secretary.

The draft bill, which would be published in October 2005, has been described as “draconian” by some human rights groups. The fact that the seven men detained yesterday are being held under existing immigration laws, said one human rights group, makes the proposed new anti-terror laws superfluous and unnecessary.

But as a concession to the human rights groups, a district judge would have to renew approval for the detention each week up to the three months.

In fact, there is currently a vigorous debate about the erosion of civil liberties in the UK going on. Earlier this month, Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, the Head of MI5, the British security service, warned in a speech at an anti-terror conference in the Netherlands that civil liberties in the UK may have to be “eroded” to protect Britons from terrorism. She said the July London bombings were a “shock”, which MI5 and police were “disappointed” they could not prevent.

But civil liberties groups warned that any liberties lost would be hard to regain and could make “martyrs” of terrorists.