Former Met Police chief rejects a return to internment for potential jihadists over fears ‘hunger strikers would fuel support’

Sweeping up large numbers of terror suspects and putting them under house arrest or in prison would worsen the threat to Britain, an ex-Scotland Yard chief has warned.

Lord Blair said internment for potential Islamic jihadists could lead to hunger strikes, fuelling anger and grievance among the country’s Muslims.

In the wake of the Manchester attack, there have been calls to imprison hundreds of British-based extremists without charge to end the risk of them wreaking carnage.

Champions of this policy claim that taking dangerous individuals off the streets would ensure they could not murder and maim innocent citizens.

But the peer, who as Ian Blair was Britain’s most senior police officer at the time of the July 7 bombings in London in 2005, insisted it would be ‘counter-productive’.

The policy of internment in Northern Ireland lasted from August 1971 until December 1975.

During that time 1,981 people were locked up, the vast majority of them young Roman Catholic men. The tough action was taken on the grounds that the terror threat justified it. But the legislation allowing it undermined civil liberties, causing uproar and making things worse by sparking a violent backlash.

Lord Blair was questioned on Radio 4’s Today programme about the prospect of new measures after Monday’s atrocity.

He said: ‘We must not move to a situation where we are just sweeping up people.

‘I mean, it reminds one of the events in Northern Ireland which led to the hunger strikes where you started to sweep up whole sets of a community, you angered that community enormously.

‘The internment was not effective. The absolute thing we need now is the co-operation of the communities of Britain, particularly, I’m afraid it’s clear, the Muslim community.

‘All of that is really, really important and to do anything completely counter-productive like house arrest and so on I would absolutely be against.’

In the months after the Paris terror attacks in November 2015, almost 400 suspects were put under house arrest.

But critics said communities felt victimised and ended co-operation with the police and security services, while French jails had become a jihadist breeding ground.

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