Glorification of terrorism will become a crime in the United Kingdom now that Parliament has backed Prime Minister Tony Blair’s version of a key part of a new anti-terror law prompted by the July bombings in London.
By a vote of 315 to 277, the House of Commons on Wednesday knocked down amendments to the Terrorism Bill, made by the unelected House of Lords, which — in Blair’s view — watered down the most important piece of anti-terror legislation in years.
The main opposition Conservatives and Liberal Democrats opposed the measure, which now awaits royal assent, citing civil rights concerns and arguing that current laws can do the job just as well.
During his weekly question period earlier in the day, Blair said banning glorification of terrorism was essential in order to crack down on radical Islamists who might influence young Muslims to turn to violence.
He cited the example of Abu Hamza al-Masri, the Egyptian-born hook-handed former imam at Finsbury Park mosque in north London, who was sentenced last week to seven years in prison for inciting racial hatred and soliciting murder.
”I hope you understand that what you and your colleagues will be voting for today will significantly dilute and weaken the measures attacking glorification that are absolutely vital if we’re to defend this country successfully against the likes of Abu Hamza,” he told the opposition benches in the Commons.
”If we take out the word ‘glorification’, we are sending a massive counter-productive signal. It is a word, I think, that members of the public readily know and understand and juries will understand.”
Banning the glorification of terrorism has been a key plank of Blair’s effort to give police and prosecutors tougher tools to confront terrorism in the wake of the July 7 2005 attacks on three London subway trains and a double-decker bus. Fifty-six people died, including four suicide bombers, in what was the biggest single violent loss of life on British soil since World War II.
Blair has taken the issue of glorification so seriously that he used his speech at the United Nations General Assembly last September to appeal to other nations to outlaw those who praise or celebrate acts of terrorism.
The Terrorism Bill has generated controversy at every turn as it has made its way through Parliament.
Last November, the Commons rejected Blair’s wish for the legislation to allow police to hold a terrorism suspect without trial for up to 90 days, opting instead for a compromise 28 days. It was Blair’s first defeat in Parliament since he took office in 1997, raising questions about his authority in what he has pledged would be his final term in Downing Street.
The glorification clause did clear the Commons in November 2005, when the Terrorism Bill was going through its second reading, but only by 17 votes after 27 members of Blair’s own Labour Party voted against it. — Sapa-AFP