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Police chief says UK jihadis who fight abroad should forfeit their passports Met chief calls for new anti-terror powers and backs 'presumption of guilt'
(35 minutes later)
Would-be jihadis who go to fight abroad should be stripped of their British passports, the country's most senior police officer has said. Britain's most senior police chief has called for wide-ranging new powers to tackle homegrown terrorism, including a "rebuttable presumption" that anyone who visits Syria without prior notice should be treated as a terror suspect.
Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe also called for the return of control orders that were used to tightly restrict the movement and behaviour of terror suspects who could not face charges in court or be deported. Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, chief constable of the Metropolitan police, also called for a return of control orders and said Britons who wage jihad in Syria or Iraq should be stripped of their passports.
Speaking on LBC today, he said: "Certainly for us anything that either stops them from going or preferably stops them from coming back is a good idea. If it works, we should do that. It seems to me it's a privilege to have a passport and be a citizen of this country, and if you're going to start fighting in another country on behalf of another state, or against another state, it seems to me that you've made a choice about where you want to be." Most significantly, however, Hogan-Howe became the first serving police chief to back Boris Johnson's proposal for the presumption of innocence to be overturned for Britons who travel to warzones.
Of the estimated 500 or 600 British aspiring terrorists thought to have travelled to Syria, around two-thirds or three-quarters are thought to be from London, and Hogan-Howe said earlier this month that Scotland Yard is prepared in case a wave of extremists decide to return home at the same time. Speaking on LBC, Hogan-Howe said: "If we can get an assumption that when people come back and have been to Syria they've been involved in terrorism. If they can prove they haven't then that's up to them. It's pretty hard for us sometimes to prove what they were doing in Syria.
He called for a return of "something like" the abolished control orders, which enabled the authorities to tell terror suspects where to live and place them under lengthy curfews. "The state's failed, we can't talk to the police there very easily; I'm sure we could have good relationships but in the middle of a war … gathering evidence to put before a court of law in this country is quite hard. We need all the help we can get in that area."
"They were stopped because the threat was reduced and quite properly they were seen as too intrusive," Hogan-Howe said. The proposal, first aired in Johnson's Daily Telegraph column on Monday, has already been dismissed by Downing Street. The prime minister's spokeswoman said on Tuesday that David Cameron had no interest in "kneejerk" responses to the threat posed by Islamic State (Isis) militants following the brutal murder of American journalist James Foley. She confirmed that Britain's intelligence agencies had not been pressing for the London mayor's idea to be introduced.
"But I think these things have got to be considered when the drum beat changes, and it's clear that the drum beat has changed." In an interview with LBC's Nick Ferrari, Hogan-Howe said "something like" control orders should be re-introduced to address the renewed threat from homegrown jihadis.
Earlier this week London mayor Boris Johnson used his Daily Telegraph column to say that those who "continue to give allegiance to a terrorist state" should lose their British citizenship, and that the law should be changed so there is a "rebuttable presumption" that those visiting war areas without notifying the authorities had done so for a terrorist purpose. "Control orders were here before; they were stopped because the threat was reduced and quite properly it was seen as too intrusive to have that sort of control order. I think these things have got to be considered when the drumbeat changes and it's clear the drumbeat changed," he said.
However, during a visit to India on Monday, Nick Clegg, deputy prime minister, rejected calls for tougher measures to combat the threat posed by returning British jihadists. The police chief, who commands the UK's biggest counter-terrorism operation, said it was debatable whether there should be a return to the previous control orders regime, which forced terror suspects to live in a certain area.
He said: "We actually have a number of measures already on the statute book that allow us to keep a very close eye on those people who aren't in prison, aren't sentenced, but nonetheless are perceived to be a threat to the United Kingdom. He said: "Whether or not we could go back that far is debatable because the courts started to strike them down. But when things changed like they have over this last few weeks … you've got to respond to that type of change."
"And of course, we will continue to review all the powers on the recommendation of the police and security services that may be deemed to be necessary to deal with this very serious issue. The home secretary, Theresa May, has called for the introduction of banning orders for extremist groups alongside powers to stop radical preachers.
"I sometimes wish it was as simple as Boris Johnson implies: all we need to do is pass a law and everything will be well." Hogan-Howe also called for would-be jihadis to be stripped of their passports, saying that those who fight overseas have "made a choice about where you want to be".
On Monday Scotland Yard confirmed that "significant progress" is being made in the search for the apparently British murderer of US journalist James Foley, 41, who was killed by extremists in Iraq. He said: "Certainly for us anything that either stops them from going or preferably stops them from coming back is a good idea. If it works, we should do that. It seems to me it's a privilege to have a passport and be a citizen of this country, and if you're going to start fighting in another country on behalf of another state, or against another state, it seems to me that you've made a choice about where you what to be."
Hogan-Howe said on Tuesday that the force is working with US counterparts to firmly establish whether the murderer is British, as his accent suggests. Hogan-Howe's intervention came after Mark Rowley, Scotland Yard's head of counter-terrorism, revealed a fivefold increase in the number of arrests this year for terrorism-related offences. There have been a total of 69 arrests in the first half of 2014 for offences covering fundraising for terrorist activity, Rowley said.
"We are making progress in that investigation, of course we are working with our partners in the US because this was an American citizen who was murdered by a British citizen, it appears. Hogan-Howe said that up to 600 Britons have left the UK to join Islamic State, two-thirds of whom are from the London area. Asked whether police had enough resources to tackle the terror threat, he said: "I think we're going to have to look at the resourcing of it, within the Met or across the country."
"First of all we have to tie down who we think did it, where it happened, and then we can start talking about jurisdiction.
"Obviously there is a voiceover, which everybody's heard, which sounds like a Brit. It sounds like somebody from London, that's all the experts tell us. So we're investigating whether that's true.
"Our investigation is making progress but it's not straightforward, it's not got a name plate stuck on it. We are going to have to do quite a lot of work with various people to try to get to the bottom of it."
Isis terrorists posted a video online last week of the horrifying murder of Foley in Iraq.
Hogan-Howe urged members of the public not to watch footage of the killing, out of respect to Foley's family, and warned that sharing the chilling clip could be a terrorist crime.
"I've seen some of it, I've not seen the awful bit, frankly I don't think I need to, and I'd urge other people not to look at it out of respect for the family. I think it should be avoided," he said.