SIX Iraqis at the centre of the controversy over the Government’s anti-terror laws are supporters of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and were allegedly sent to Britain to carry out terror attacks, according to Whitehall sources.

The men, detained last year and placed under highly restricitve control orders, arrived in Britain as asylum-seekers but were allegedly plotting attacks on civilians. Whitehall sources claim that the attacks would have involved bombs in which there would have been mass fatalities.

The men, in their twenties and thirties, were detained in raids in Greater Manchester, London and the Midlands in November and December.

They are being held under draconian conditions including having to remain in their homes for 18 hours a day. They are banned from using mobile telephones or having access to the internet.

The men have either had their asylum claims rejected or are awaiting decisions. They say that they cannot be returned to Iraq because they fear ill-treatment.

On Wednesday Mr Justice Sullivan, a High Court judge, quashed control orders made against the men, declaring the orders incompatible with their human rights.

The allegations of links with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, al-Qaeda’s leader in Iraq who was killed this month, reflect Whitehall’s anger at the ruling. With the battle lines drawn between the judiciary and ministers over anti-terror laws, Whitehall is clearly attempting to put the judges on the back foot by indicating that they are not taking the threat and potential danger to the public seriously.

John Denham, who chairs the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee, demanded urgent talks between politicians and the judiciary. He told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: “There is a constitutional crisis emerging here, I think, about the way in which the judges and the courts are approaching these issues.

“When many of us, as I did, supported the Human Rights Act — and indeed still support it — we thought that, on great matters of state of this sort, if the elected Parliament had taken a careful view of what was in the wider public interest that would be given considerable weight by the courts.

“That doesn’t seem to be what’s happening at the moment and that’s why I don’t think it’s over the top to talk about an emerging constitutional crisis.”

John Reid, the Home Secretary, will seek to overturn the control order ruling. The first hearing takes place on Monday. but an appeal in the case of the Iraqis is unlikely to be heard befor the autumn.

If the High Court decisions stand, human rights lawyers say that the Government will have to go back to the drawing board.

Mr Denham said that he could see no alternative to some form of control order. “If effective control orders are struck down . . . I think that probably means that the people go back into the pool of people we are concerned about and the security services will take very difficult decisions about who not to keep an eye on, and let’s just hope they choose the right people.”

Yesterday the office of the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, said that there was already an informal mechanism for exchanging views through regular meetings between the head of the judiciary and ministers.

David Pannick, QC, a leading human rights barrister, said: “There is no constitutional crisis. On the contrary, the constitution is working well. Judges are doing their job and applying the laws enacted by Parliament, including the Human Rights Act.

“If politicians find that inconvenient, they will just have to try a bit harder to devise policies that comply with basic principles. If there is a crisis, it is a synthetic political crisis created by politicians.”

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