UN: A senior UN representative last night threatened to cite the British government for violation of human rights over its planned deportations of alleged terrorist sympathisers.
Manfred Novak, the UN human rights commission's special investigator on torture, said he is seeking permission through the UK foreign office to visit Britain to discuss the issue with home secretary Charles Clarke.
In a statement on Tuesday night, Prof Novak said the government's intention to return radical preachers to their countries of origin, even though some of those countries have a track record of human rights abuses, "reflects a tendency in Europe to circumvent the international obligation not to deport anybody if there is a serious risk that he or she might be subjected to torture". His intervention came as Mr Clarke, in response to the London bombings, yesterday introduced a list of "unacceptable behaviour" which would allow him deport or exclude foreign citizens for glorifying or encouraging terrorism.
Mr Clarke said the first exclusions and deportations would take place within the "next few days".
He rejected the UN criticism, saying "the human rights of those people who were blown up on the tube in London on July 7th are, to be quite frank, more important than the human rights of the people who committed those acts.
"I wish the UN would look at human rights in the round, rather than simply focusing all the time on the terrorist."
But Prof Novak refused to accept the rebuke. "The UN is strongly concerned about terrorism and counter-terrorism. But there are certain standards that have to be observed in the context of counter-terrorism," he said last night. "We in the western democratic countries, in the fight against terrorism, should not step over these limits by violating international law."
Prof Novak, whose investigations take him round the world, said he could cite Britain when he reports to the UN general assembly in October, but he hoped the issue could be sorted out before then. His main objection is to the government's policy of seeking memoranda of understanding from countries to which people would be deported that they would not be tortured. He said the memorandum of understandings were not an appropriate tool to eradicate the risk of torture.
The new rules were first announced by Tony Blair after the bombings. Mr Clarke, in an effort to preserve cross-party unity, yesterday toned down one of Mr Blair's original suggestions that would have allowed the Home Office to act against people who express "extreme views that are in conflict with the UK's culture of tolerance".
Mayor of London Ken Livingstone warned that the rules should pass what he called "the Mandela test" - whether they would have covered African National Congress supporters.