Anti-Terrorism Laws on Fast Track

The British and Irish parliaments were called back from summer recess Wednesday to rush through tough anti-terrorism legislation aimed at jailing violent opponents of the Northern Ireland peace accord, such as those responsible for a recent bombing that killed 28 people in the province.

Approval of the legislation, expected by the lower houses of both parliaments early today, coincides with President Clinton’s visit to Northern Ireland and other efforts to move the peace process forward after the Aug. 15 bombing that also wounded more than 200 people in the market town of Omagh. The upper houses are expected to take up the legislation today.

British, Irish and U.S. officials have been pressing all sides in the Northern Ireland conflict to make concessions after the attack by a splinter group calling itself the “Real IRA.” The bombing, which killed Roman Catholics and Protestants, has united the two communities in anger.

In response to the political pressure and public opinion, Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army, announced Wednesday that it had appointed its chief negotiator, Martin McGuinness, to an international committee negotiating the decommissioning of weapons.

McGuinness’ appointment is seen as a step toward meeting the demands of Protestant leader David Trimble, the first minister of Northern Ireland, that the IRA begin disarming and declare an end to its war against British rule before Sinn Fein takes seats in a new Northern Ireland government.

On Tuesday, Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams issued his strongest denunciation of violence yet, saying that it “must be for all of us a thing of the past, over, done with and gone.”

Spokesmen for Protestant paramilitaries, called loyalists, responded that if the IRA is sincere in ending the war, so are they.

“As far as I’m concerned, if the IRA war is over, then the loyalist war is over,” said David Ervine, whose Progressive Unionist Party is the political arm of the outlawed Ulster Volunteer Force. He said concrete actions are needed to prove the IRA’s commitment to peace.

In London, British Prime Minister Tony Blair told the House of Commons that things are “moving in the right direction” in Northern Ireland and that the new measures contained in a controversial bill on terrorism and conspiracy are an effort to deal with “small and evil groups of violent men who seek to wreck the hopes for peace which the great majority yearn for and have voted for.”

But senior members of Parliament from Blair’s Labor Party and other parties complained that they were being asked to rush through the complex legislation without adequate debate or amendments. The text of the law was published Tuesday evening.

The bill, also aimed at Muslim extremists using London as a base of operations, will make it easier to secure convictions for membership in outlawed groups and to seize assets that are supposedly used to support guerrilla activities.

Under the bill, the opinion of a senior police officer would be admissible in court as evidence of a suspect’s membership in a terrorist organization.

Courts would be allowed to draw an inference of guilt from the refusal of an accused person to answer police questions about membership in a terrorist organization during an interrogation.

On conviction, assets of an individual found to be a member of an outlawed group could be seized if the funds had been or could be used in support of the group.

It also would become an offense to conspire in Britain to commit terrorist acts or other serious offenses in a foreign country.

Several Labor members of Parliament complained that the measures against international terrorism were ill-conceived and had been inserted into the bill only because Clinton is visiting Northern Ireland today after his summit in Russia.

Civil rights activists also complained that the bill threatened human rights and argued that if a law barring conspiracies to commit offenses abroad had been in effect in the 1980s, it could have led to the arrest of London-based members of the African National Congress. Former ANC chief Nelson Mandela is now president of South Africa.

Chris Mullin, a Labor member who chairs the Home Affairs Committee, told Parliament he was concerned that the new law would backfire in Northern Ireland.

“If we get this wrong, we shall end up creating a political base for a tiny, isolated sect that at the moment has no political base,” Mullin said.

But Blair said that there were safeguards in the legislation against its abuse and that he doubted a backlash because the splinter groups, unlike the IRA, have little support for their activities. He also said that London had to march in step with Ireland, where Prime Minister Bertie Ahern was promoting similar legislation.

Leaders of the Real IRA and other small dissident groups are believed to operate from the Irish Republic, and IRA weapons caches are believed to be hidden there.

Ahern said the legislation was “tough and draconian.” In a message to the Real IRA he said: “You cannot hope to take on the people of Ireland and win. . . . These people are about to learn a lesson that will teach them to respect the strength of Irish democracy.”

The Irish Republic voted overwhelmingly for the Good Friday agreement in April along with the people of Northern Ireland. The accord calls for Northern Ireland to remain part of Britain as long as a majority wants it to and establishes a local government of Protestants and Catholics.

It also calls on both sides to decommission weapons and for the release of political prisoners.

On Wednesday, Britain’s Northern Ireland secretary, Marjorie “Mo” Mowlam, released from a jail in Belfast, the provincial capital, two Scots Guardsmen who were serving life sentences for murdering an unarmed Catholic teenager in 1992. IRA and Protestant paramilitary convicts are expected to be released next week.