Civil liberties priority wrong - PM - News in brief - Evening Standard
       

Civil liberties priority wrong - PM

Tony Blair has hit out at the "dangerous misjudgment" of putting civil liberties before fighting terror.

He spoke out as it emerged tough new "stop and question" powers may be given to the police as part of a new anti-terror package.

He insisted the disappearance of three suspects under control orders was not the fault of the Home Office but society's "misguided and wrong" priorities.

Writing in the Sunday Times, he said: "The fault is not with our services or, in this instance, with the Home Office.

"We have chosen as a society to put the civil liberties of the suspect, even if a foreign national, first.

"I happen to believe this is misguided and wrong."

He went on: "Over the past five or six years we have decided as a country that except in the most limited of ways, the threat to our public safety does not justify changing radically the legal basis on which we confront this extremism.

"Their right to traditional civil liberties comes first. I believe this is a dangerous misjudgment."

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