Hate preacher laws may need re-examining, says independent reviewer
By Owen Bowcott, Guardian:
David Anderson QC says prosecutors may need extra legal powers to go after those encouraging violent radicalisation.
Extra legal powers may be needed to prosecute hate preachers who encourage violent radicalisation in private conversations, according to the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation.
In his final report after six years in the influential post, David Anderson QC says the requirement in the 2006 Terrorism Act that such persuasion needs to be “published” or delivered at a meeting should be re-examined.
“That change might make it possible to use undercover officers for the purposes of gathering evidence against those who are inspiring terrorists,” he suggests.
It may also be necessary to specify more clearly “examples of ways in which support for a proscribed organisation could be invited”, he explains. “Prosecutors with experience of such cases have told me that this could assist juries in matching the alleged conduct to the offence.”
Anderson, who stands down in February, was not formally recommending such changes but believed there should be a more detailed inquiry. “I offer them for discussion as a possible partial solution to the problems of prosecuting hate preachers,” he writes, “and in the spirit that our freedoms are better protected by a well-functioning criminal law than they are by a system based on coercive civil orders of broad and uncertain scope.”
Anderson says: “It is entirely fair to ask why the law did not catch up with Anjem Choudary [who was convicted of inviting support for Daesh earlier this year] sooner.” He said the Crown Prosecution Service considered Choudary’s activities on 10 occasions between 2002 and 2015.
Related Posts
Tags
Share This
