Britain’s High Court has withdrawn the curfews imposed on two men considered potential security threats, dealing a blow to the government which says such measures are a tool to combat extremists.

The ruling denies the authorities power to use secret evidence to justify restricting people's freedom and presents a new challenge to so called "control orders", introduced in 2005.
 

Control orders, part of a series of security measures brought in since the 11 September 2001 attacks on the United States, allow terrorism suspects to be kept under curfew for up to 16 hours a day.
 

Ben Ward, deputy director in the Europe and Central Asia division of Human Rights Watch (HRW), says that control orders “fall short of detention but in some cases they can amount to a kind of house arrest.” The two men, who cannot be named for legal reasons, had argued that the control orders imposed on them in 2006 violated their human rights because they were not told what the evidence against them was, and could not therefore defend themselves in court.

Evidence questionable
What the Court has done, Ward says, “is to require a fairness in the proceedings that didn’t exist before by requiring that the government shows the evidence that it has.” Conversely, rather than disclosing the evidence against the suspected men, the government has chosen to modify or withdraw the restrictions altogether. “Naturally,” says Ward, “[this causes one to question] what that evidence was in the first place.”
 

HRW has long held that the system of control orders violates human rights: “Everyone has the right to know the case against them. [If you’re going to impose restrictions on people] that are similar to the kind of restrictions that you could have imposed on you if you’re convicted of a criminal offence, then the amount of evidence required should be the same.”

Government to appeal
The British government is contesting the ruling and will resist the payment of damages to former subjects of control orders. "I'm very disappointed by this judgment”, said British Home Secretary Alan Johnson, “and will be appealing in the strongest possible terms". From the government’s perspective, “control orders were properly made for the purpose of protecting the public and that they should not be retrospectively quashed," he said.