The Government should consider abolishing all anti-terror laws as they are “unnecessary” in the fight against extremists, the barrister tasked with reviewing Britain’s terrorism legislation has said.
Speaking exclusively to The Independent before this week's attacks in Spain in which 14 people were killed in vehicle rammings in Barcelona and the nearby coastal town of Cambrils, Max Hill QC, the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, argued potential jihadis can be stopped with existing “general” laws that are not always being used effectively to take threats off the streets.
His comments come after several terrorists launching attacks in the UK and Europe were revealed to be former petty criminals who had links to criminal gangs before being radicalised – a pattern which appears to apply to the Spanish attackers too.
“We should not legislate in haste, we should not use the mantra of ‘something has to be done’ as an excuse for creating new laws,” he added. “We should make use of what we have.”
That includes measures that can be used to “aggravate” conventional crimes like murder and possessing an offensive weapon to hand would-be terrorists longer sentences.
He also expressed concern over the threat to civil liberties posed by some proposed anti-terror measures, warning laws aimed at tackling hate preachers could easily veer into the territory of “thought crime”.

Source: Mena