'Anti-terror laws turning UK into a police state'

The row erupted late last month, when Home Secretary Charles Clarke announced a series of planned changes to the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001, passed following the September 11 attacks on the United States.

That law allowed foreign nationals suspected of terrorism offences who refused to be deported to be detained indefinitely without trial, solely on the word of the home secretary.

Slammed by rights groups as creating "Britain's Guantanamo Bay", after the US centre for terror suspects in Cuba, late last year the Law Lords, Britain's top court of appeal, ruled that the measure broke human rights obligations.

In response, Clarke announced on January 26 that 12 detained foreign suspects would gradually be freed.

However, under a planned change to the law they could instead be placed under "control orders", including indefinite house arrest, electronic tagging or curfews, again on the say-so of the home secretary.

The new proposals, which have yet to reach the statute books, have prompted further ire from rights groups, who point out that indefinite house arrest without trial is usually only practised by despotic regimes such as Myanmar, also known as Burma, China and North Korea.

Louise Christian, a lawyer representing several of the detainees held under the 2001 law, has been scathing, calling the new proposals "the kind of measures aimed at people like Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma".

Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of Myanmar's main opposition party and a Nobel Peace laureate, has been held off and on at her home by the military dictatorship in Yangon for many years.

The Guardian newspaper reported Monday that terror suspects detained at Belmarsh prison and Broadmoor high security hospital have launched a case at the European court of human rights that could wreck the government's plan to replace detention in prison with house arrest.