John Wadham, director of Liberty:

"Arrests under these powers stamp all over basic principles of British justice and the European Convention of Human Rights - even the Government admits that. We pride ourselves on our traditions of fairness and justice. By locking people up without clear evidence or access to a proper trial, the Government is violating those traditions"

"If we have real evidence that these people are guilty of the very serious crimes alleged, then they should be charged and put on trial. Imprisoning people without trial remains utterly unjust".

"Liberty is co-ordinating a group of lawyers who represent some of these individuals and are available to represent anyone who contacts us. We will take legal action to challenge these detentions both in the UK and European courts".

BACKGROUND
The detainees will be entitled to a bail hearing; if not released, they can appeal to the Special Immigration Appeals Commission. Although the Home Secretary technically upgraded SIAC's status as a minor concession to ensure passage of the Anti-Terrorism Act, the SIAC process simply isn't designed to deal with indefinite detention of this kind.

The Special Immigration Appeal Commission process is a limited and partly secret process. The person and his or her lawyer will not be entitled to see all the evidence and the appeal panel will have to exclude them when it hears that secret material. The case will not have to be proved beyond reasonable doubt, the presumption of innocence will not apply and the usual quality checks on the evidence will still be missing.