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  • CONTROL ORDERS: UNSAFE AND UNFAIR

  • Abu Rideh Family

  • Control orders allow indefinite house arrest for people suspected of terrorism. Under a control order you might never know the accusation against you and never have the chance to clear your name.

    Control orders allow for punishment without trial. ‘Controlees’ are tagged and can be made to remain inside for up to 16 hours a day with many other severe restrictions that affect them and their families.

    Control orders don’t keep us safe – suspects should be tried in court and locked up if they are dangerous.


    Liberty’s objections to control orders

    • Unsafe – control orders allow potentially dangerous people to live at home with limited supervision. Some of these suspects have disappeared whilst under an order.
    • Unfair – 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.
    • Threat to fair trial – control orders by-pass criminal justice and the safeguards that guarantee fair trial.


    What you can do

    The control order regime is surely on its last legs. Recent legal rulings have revoked individual orders and the new Coalition Government has promised an urgent review of the policy.

    Help Liberty end this unsafe and unfair policy now

    - Use our template letter (word doc) to write to the new Home Secretary.

    - Add your name to our petition and tell the Government that control orders are long past their sell-by-date.

    - Write to your MP and ask them to put pressure on the Home Secretary to end the control order regime. Send an email here.

    - Help us get the issue out there, why not tell your friends, tweet or blog about control orders, or write a letter to your local newspaper.

  • Press Releases

    • Terror case poses first test to new coalition on rights and freedoms

    • Today the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC) ruled that two men allegedly involved in a terror plot could not be deported to Pakistan. Mr. Justice Mitting said that they could not be returned as Pakistan had ‘a long…history of disappearances, illegal detention and of the torture and ill-treatment of those detained’.
    • 18.05.2010

    • Government digs in heels over unsafe and unfair control order regime

    • Liberty today expressed bitter disappointment at the Government’s continued support for the much condemned system of control orders. The Home Secretary reiterated the importance of the regime and said current control orders will be looked at case by case in a bid to comply with the recent damning House of Lords judgment.
    • 16.09.2009

Further information

More detail about the control order scheme and our objections.
Find out moreRead More

  • Take Action

  • Write to your MP and ask them to put pressure on the Home Secretary to end the control order regime.
  • Add your name to our petition and tell the Government that control orders are long past their sell-by-date.
  • A list of which MPs voted for and against control orders in 2010 (PDF)
  • Use our template letter to call on the Home Secretary to act to end control orders, May 2010 (Word)

  • Case Studies

  • 'Controlee' Cerie Bullivant explains what it's like to live under a control order, February 2010 (PDF)
  • Mahmoud Abu Rideh has spent four years on a control order. His wife describes the family's descent into a nightmare in The Independent, June 2009