A terror suspect under police surveillance has disappeared, Britain's top law-and-order official said on Tuesday.
The suspect was being monitored under the so-called control order regime, British Home Secretary John Reid said in a written statement to parliamentarians.
Under the program, suspects who have not been charged are released from custody but remain under observation and can be electronically tagged, kept under curfew, denied the use of telephones or the Internet, and prohibited from meeting outsiders.
The control order system was created by British Prime Minister Tony Blair's government after Britain's highest court ruled in December 2004 that it was unlawful to detain terrorist suspects indefinitely without trial.
The suspect, whose identity is protected by an anonymity order, absconded earlier this month, Reid said. The man was the third terror suspect to disappear while being monitored under the control order.
"The individual is not believed to represent a direct threat to the public in the UK at this time," Reid said regarding the latest escapee. "Locating the individual is an operational matter for the police."
The government also declined to identify the other two suspects who disappeared while being held under control orders last year.
Reid's announcement came as the government faced criticism for another blunder.
On Sunday, the government said it was ordering a review of all criminal databases after acknowledging that files on hundreds of criminals were not entered into police computers. The government insists the mistake -- caused by a backlog in processing EU records at Britain's Criminal Records Bureau -- did not lead to any violent or sexual offenders being cleared to work with vulnerable people, such as children.
A government spokesman said Reid was writing to Cabinet colleagues to secure agreement for a review of British criminal databases and how information was shared between them.
An unidentified Home Office official was suspended in connection with the mistake after providing information about it to an internal inquiry.
Opposition politicians attacked the government's handling of the files.
Reid took over at the Home Office in May after former Home Secretary Charles Clarke's dismissal when it was revealed that foreign criminals were released from prisons without being considered for deportation.
On Tuesday, David Davis of the opposition Conservative Party, said: "Far from getting a grip since John Reid took over, the Home Office has been marked by murderers walking out of open prisons and suspected terrorists escaping from control orders."
"This latest failure demonstrates what we said some time ago," he said.
X-37B COMPARISON: China’s spaceplane is most likely testing technology, much like US’ vehicle, said Victoria Samson, an official at the Secure World Foundation China’s shadowy, uncrewed reusable spacecraft, which launches atop a rocket booster and lands at a secretive military airfield, is most likely testing technology, but could also be used for manipulating or retrieving satellites, experts said. The spacecraft, on its third mission, was last month observed releasing an object, moving several kilometers away and then maneuvering back to within a few hundred meters of it. “It’s obvious that it has a military application, including, for example, closely inspecting objects of the enemy or disabling them, but it also has non-military applications,” said Marco Langbroek, a lecturer in optical space situational awareness at Delft
Malaysia yesterday installed a motorcycle-riding billionaire sultan as its new king in lavish ceremonies for a post seen as a ballast in times of political crises. The coronation ceremony for Malaysia’s King Sultan Ibrahim, 65, at the National Palace in Kuala Lumpur followed his oath-taking in January as the country’s 17th monarch. Malaysia is a constitutional monarchy, with a unique arrangement that sees the throne change hands every five years between the rulers of nine Malaysian states headed by centuries-old Islamic royalty. While chiefly ceremonial, the position of king has in the past few years played an increasingly important role. Royal intervention was
The Philippine Air Force must ramp up pilot training if it is to buy 20 or more multirole fighter jets as it modernizes and expands joint operations with its navy, a commander said yesterday. A day earlier US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said that the US “will do what is necessary” to see that the Philippines is able to resupply a ship on the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) that Manila uses to reinforce its claims to the atoll. Sullivan said the US would prefer that the Philippines conducts the resupplies of the small crew on the warship Sierra Madre,
AIRLINES RECOVERING: Two-thirds of the flights canceled on Saturday due to the faulty CrowdStrike update that hit 8.5 million devices worldwide occurred in the US As the world continues to recover from massive business and travel disruptions caused by a faulty software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, malicious actors are trying to exploit the situation for their own gain. Government cybersecurity agencies across the globe and CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz are warning businesses and individuals around the world about new phishing schemes that involve malicious actors posing as CrowdStrike employees or other tech specialists offering to assist those recovering from the outage. “We know that adversaries and bad actors will try to exploit events like this,” Kurtz said in a statement. “I encourage everyone to remain vigilant