Three terror suspects, including two brothers of an Islamic fanatic jailed for plotting mass murder, are on the run tonight. They had all been under control orders requiring them to report to the authorities every day.Two of the men are Lamine Adam, 26, and Ibrahim Adam, 20, whose brother Anthony Garcia, 24, was jailed for life last month for his part in the fertiliser bomb plot. The third man is their associate Cerie Bullivant, 24.
Home Secretary John Reid, who faced fresh accusations that the Government's terror policy is a shambles, took the unprecedented step of naming the three after consultations with Scotland Yard. The fact that they were named - Ministers have resisted all attempts to identify three other control order suspects on the run - was seen as evidence of the urgent need to find them.
Opposition MPs said it was clear control orders could not protect the public.
Control orders were introduced as a compromise after the courts ruled that terror suspects could not be detained without trial. But successive home secretaries have suffered a series of human rights defeats which mean suspects can no longer be placed under virtual house arrest. Six in total have now gone on the run.
The Adam brothers, originally from Algeria, had been due to contact a monitoring company on Monday, but failed to do so. Bullivant failed to report to his local police station the following day.
Deputy assistant commissioner Peter Clarke, head of Terrorism Command for the Metropolitan Police, said: "They have breached the conditions of their control orders, which is a serious crime. We know that Lamine Adam, Ibrahim Adam and Cerie Bullivant are associates and may well be together. It is possible the public can help us trace them."
Mr Reid will make an emergency statement to Parliament tomorrow.
Security sources stressed that the men were under control orders because they were suspected of plotting atrocities overseas and said they were not an immediate danger to the public here. But their links to Garcia, who changed his name when he became a model, are certain to cause alarm. He was one of five men jailed for life last month for a bomb plot linked to Al Qaeda that could have killed hundreds of people.