Convicted terror leader with Paris link at large in UK

A convicted terror leader with links to the recent Paris attacks is at large in the UK over the country’s Human Rights act.

Baghdad Meziane, who was jailed for 11 years in 2003 for running a terror support network, has successfully staved off deportation to his native Algeria, despite the Home Office insistence that he constitutes "a danger to the community of the United Kingdom," the Telegraph has reported.

Meziane was a close associate of Djamel Beghal, a convicted terrorist who mentored two of the Paris attackers while they were in jail together. The pair lived close to each other in Leicester and Meziane, 49, once supplied Beghal with a false passport allowing him to travel to an al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan.

There is a growing row over whether Britain’s security and intelligence agencies have sufficient powers to tackle the terrorist threat.

Now London-based political commentator Sara Marusek believes the government uses certain figures as political tools to leverage its policies.

“I think the problem is that there are certain people who have positions of power and have access to financial networks and to people who push through this agenda. For example, there's something like the Henry Jackson society which is definitely an Islamophobic think tank. It wasn't that way initially, but it has developed in about the last several years and they have uncanny access to certain government figures and for example the head of the Charity Commission right now in the former board member from the trustee of Henry Jackson society. He has made a claim that he's going to go after Muslim charities in particular and the Islamist the threat,” Marusek told Press TV’s UK Desk on Sunday.

Her comments come as the UK parliament has been discussing a tough anti-terror bill that will give sweeping powers to the government and spy agencies to crack down on terror suspects, if passed by the Westminster.

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