Emma Thompson, Annie Lennox, Honor Blackman, Simon Callow, Riz Ahmed, Vivienne Westwood and Rory Bremner added their voices to the 3,000 members of the public who signed Liberty’s 2010 control order petition in protest at the worst legislative legacy of the war on terror.
Despite a new name and tweaks to some conditions, the new “control order-lite” will still constitute punishment without trial, ruining innocent people’s lives and allowing potentially dangerous people to evade prosecution.
Take action now
- Download our print-and-post letter (PDF) for your MP, calling on them to make sure control orders - and control orders lite- are scrapped once and for all
- Send an e-card featuring our celebrity line up of unusual suspects to help spread the word about our campaign (there's another version)
- On Facebook? Visit our page and grab an Unusual Suspect graphic for your profile picture
“I've seen for myself the damage control orders have done to entirely innocent people. I think they make dangerous people even more dangerous.”
- Emma Thompson
"The law is the law; it enshrines basic rights. No security threat can allow the law and the rights it protects to be suspended. That would be the triumph of terror. We must fight terror by asserting our values, not by negating them. Control orders are fundamentally unjust; they must go."
- Simon Callow
“Britain was once admired universally for our proud tradition of justice and liberty. However complicity in torture and control orders have undermined our international reputation as a democracy that values the presumption of innocence and the right to a fair trial. Those under control orders might never know the case against them and is powerless to dispute it or show their innocence. I am no longer proud of British justice.”
- Honor Blackman
“The idea of being punished indefinitely without even knowing what the charge or evidence against you is - that must be a living hell."
- Riz Ahmed
“Those suspected of terrorism should face a proper Trial, not a Kafkaesque one. Why add injustice to injury?”
- Rory Bremner
“Do you know what a Control order is?
Control orders allow indefinite punishment without trial for people suspected of terrorism.
Under a control order you might never know the accusation against you or ever have the chance to clear your name.
Liberty believes that this policy is both unsafe and unfair - unsafe because control orders allow potentially dangerous people to live at home with limited supervision (some of these suspects have disappeared whilst under an order) and unfair because control orders place unending restrictions on liberty and a raft of dehumanizing sanctions on people who may have no convictions and who can never clear their name. Anyone subject to a control order is living under constant and indefinite suspicion – not just from the authorities, but from their communities, friends and all who know them. Control orders by-pass criminal justice and the safeguards that guarantee fair trial.
It makes you think...doesn’t it?...”
- Annie Lennox... A Liberty supporter
- will still include electronic tagging and an overnight residence requirement
- will make it easier for ‘controlees’ to use the internet, but will still place restrictions on which people they can meet and where they can go, including foreign travel bans
- will limit control orders to two years – although if it is possible to make a new order as soon as the existing one expires, then this constraint will be illusory
Crucially, the orders will still be initiated by the Home Secretary – and the regime will continue to run outside the criminal justice system of investigation, arrest, charge and conviction.
More about control orders