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Terror law on the mat

LONDON: A major plank of the British government’s anti-terror legislation was in tatters on Thursday after the Lord Chief Justice Lord Phillips, presiding over the Court of Appeal, ruled that merely possessing extremist literature could not be a ground for conviction on terror charges unless there was “direct” evidence of “terrorist intent”.

The court quashed the conviction of five young Muslims of Pakistani origin who were sent to jail last year after being convicted of downloading and exchanging “jihadi” material. They were accused of being “intoxicated” with extremist materials.

The ruling, which is likely to lead to other similar convictions being quashed, is seen as a huge blow to the government’s anti-terror regime as prosecutors have tended to rely heavily on Sections 57 and 58 of the Terrorism Act which make possession of terrorist literature an offence.

Ruling that in future, the prosecution would need to prove that there was a clear intention to use such material to carry out a terrorist act, Lord Phillips said: “Literature may be stored in a book or on a bookshelf, or on a computer drive, without any intention on the part of the possessor to make any future use of it at all.”

The case of the five Muslim students — Irfan Raja, Awaab Iqbal, Aitzaz Zafar, Usman Malik and Akbar Butt, all in their 20s — had attracted wide media attention and caused anger in the Muslim community who accused the police of “criminalising” innocent men. Prosecution had claimed that they had a huge stock of extremist material and were planning to go to Afghanistan to wage “jihad”.

The Crown Prosecution Service was reported to be considering an appeal to the House of Lords.

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