Britain: A suggestion yesterday by the British Home Secretary, Mr David Blunkett, that terror suspects could be jailed on the basis of intelligence offered at a trial held in secret was described last night as shameful.
The threat of terrorism was so great, he claimed, that the burden of proof should be reduced from beyond reasonable doubt to the balance of probabilities.
The proposals were set out in a discussion paper that envisaged "pre-emptive" trials presided over by judges vetted by the secret services, including MI5, the internal security service, MI6, which deals with external security, and GCHQ, the government's global electronic eavesdropping centre in Cheltenham.
Lawyers defending the accused would also have to be vetted and some evidence withheld from them to stop sensitive information leaking back to defendants and terror groups.
But the proposals drew a stinging response from Baroness Kennedy QC, who compared the Home Secretary to the Zimbabwean President, Mr Robert Mugabe.
"He really is a shameless authoritarian," said the lawyer, who was appointed a peer by the Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, in 1997.
She accused the home secretary of playing games by talking up the draconian nature of the plans in "a classic Blunkett tactic".
"You suggest all kinds of out-rageous and awful things because then you get away with half of them," she said.
"You set people up for something awful and then they are relieved when they don't get the worst possible scenario.
"But all of this is terrible and even half of it would be a disgrace. We can be confident that many of his colleagues in the cabinet, including particularly the attorney general, will sit on this, because it really is an affront to the rule of law."