LAWYERS acting for 12 foreign terror suspects detained without trial will try to get them released on bail within the month after the ruling by the law lords that holding them is unlawful.

Preparations are under way for a legal challenge to win freedom for the suspects held in Belmarsh and Woodhill prisons and Broadmoor top security mental hospital.

The moves came as Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, attacked the law lords for their “strident” ruling, which he said was “simply wrong”.

The applications for bail will be made to the Special Immigration Appeal Commission.

Natalia Garcia, the solicitor for detainee C, currently in Woodhill jail, Milton Keynes, said: “This legislation is completely flawed. There is no basis for holding these men.”

Legal teams for the detainees are also looking at the option of challenging their detention by judicial review. They are also considering taking the case to the European Court of Human Rights, which requires them to lodge an application within six months. Although the lawyers will seek bail applications, they are really waiting for the Government to respond to the 8-1 ruling that holding foreign terror suspects was unlawful under the European Convention of Human Rights.

Government lawyers are considering the ruling to see whether legislation can be introduced to meet the objections of the law lords. The controversial powers allowing foreign terror suspects to be held must be renewed by March 13. When the law was passed in 2001, Parliament insisted that it was so draconian that it should be debated annually.

Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, has said that he will seek to renew the legislation. He could choose to ignore the law lords and ask Parliament to restate its support for the law. Or the men could be released under surveillance, be electronically tagged, have their passports confiscated and be made to report regularly to police.

Mr Straw said that the law lords were wrong to imply that terror suspects were being arbitrarily held without charge. He said that the Government would look carefully at possible changes in the law after what he called their “strident” comments.

But he insisted that it was for Parliament, and not judges, to decide how best Britain could be defended against the threat of terrorism. He told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: “The people concerned have a right of appeal to a Special Immigration Appeals Tribunal, which is chaired by a High Court judge, and on each of the cases of the people currently detained the decision to certify them as requiring detention was approved by that court.

“The law lords are simply wrong to imply that this is a decision to detain these people on the whim of the Home Secretary,” he said.

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