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http://iht.com/articles/2005/07/17/news/blair.phpBritain planning tighter laws to fight terrorism
By Alan Cowell The New York Times
MONDAY, JULY 18, 2005
LONDON After the shock of the London bombings, British authorities are readying new and tighter laws enabling the police to thwart suspected attacks and to silence clerics who they have called ''preachers of hate.''
At the same time, the police and government authorities are urging Muslim leaders to ''take on the extremists'' in an attempt to draw Muslims into the policing of their own communities, Prime Minister Tony Blair indicated. Charles Falconer, the government minister in charge of the judiciary, said Sunday that the new legislation would have three aims: to outlaw indirect incitement of terror, to prevent preparations for terror and to stop anyone from providing or receiving training in terrorism.
Falconer told the BBC that the new laws would permit the imprisonment or deportation of people ''attacking the values of the West'' or ''glorifying the acts of suicide bombers.'' In the past Britain has been criticized by other European countries for permitting clerics such as Abu Hamza al-Masri, Abu Qatada and Sheik Omar el-Bakri to preach incendiary sermons to young Muslims. The new legislation also is designed to punish people who go to training camps or help other people to reach them. Falconer was speaking on Sunday, one day after the police released a striking image of the four suspected bombers. They are accused of attacking three Underground trains and a double-decker bus in central London on July 7, killing 55 people, including themselves, in a bloody onslaught that has splintered the prism of Britain's politics. Up until the bombings, Britons had been warned to expect an attack, but few expected it come from within their own borders.
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