Obsolete

Tony Blair last night signalled a turning point in British postwar liberalism when he announced plans to deport extremist foreign Muslim clerics without appeal, close down mosques preaching hate, proscribe extremist Muslim groups and extend the use of control orders to British nationals advocating terrorism.

The prime minister also promised to wage a battle with the British and European courts, warning that he would amend the Human Rights Act if necessary to override likely judicial objections to the proposed deportation regime.

His startling package of measures sparked alarm among many Muslim groups and lawyers and led Charles Kennedy, the Liberal Democrat leader, to say Mr Blair was endangering the cross-party consensus developed since the July 7 bombings. The civil rights group Liberty said: "The fundamental values of a democracy cannot be changed because we are provoked by terrorists."

But the promise to end Britain's reputation as a sanctuary for extremism won broad backing from the police and the Conservatives.

The Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir Ian Blair, said people had already been selected for targeting with the new measures. He told BBC2's Newsnight he was "very pleased" with the proposals.

Deportations of extremist clerics will start after finalising memoranda of understandings with as many as 10 countries including Jordan, Algeria and Lebanon to try to ensure anyone deported there would not be subject to torture.

Mr Blair said foreign nationals would be deported if they were found to be actively engaged in extremist websites, bookshops, centres, networks and organisations of concern. A database will list individuals who pose a threat to British society. Anyone on it will be barred from the UK, with appeals happening abroad.

Mr Blair pleased some Labour Muslim MPs by announcing he was proscribing two Islamist organisations, Hizb ut-Tahrir and al-Mujahiroun. Hizb ut-Tahrir said: "This exposes the fundamentalism of the government ... Our organisation has a record of 50 years of non-violent political activity ... We will resist the ban through what legal means are available."

Directors' pay at Britain's top companies climbed an average of 16.1% last year - four times faster than average earnings and eight times the rate of inflation.

The increase takes the average pay for a chief executive, including bonuses and gains from long-term incentive plans, to more than £2.5m.

The continuing rapid rise in directors' remuneration is revealed in the Guardian's annual executive pay survey.

The 16% increase for 2004-05 follows a 13% rise for the previous year and 23% the year before that. Average earnings are rising at 4.1% and the average annual salary is £22,060. An average chief executive is paid 113 times more than an average UK worker.

The survey has identified more than 230 directors who received more than £1m last year - up from around 190 the year before. The figure is reached by adding salaries, annual cash bonuses and gains from longer-term share options and performance plans.

The highest-paid executive last year was Sir Martin Sorrell, the chief executive of WPP, the world's second biggest advertising agency. Pay plans came to fruition for Sir Martin in 2004, taking his rewards to more than £52m.

Among other top earners was Tony Ball, the former chief executive of satellite broadcaster BSkyB, who is ranked second as a result of agreeing not to set up in opposition to Sky for at least two years. The broadcaster paid him £10.7m.

Jean-Pierre Garnier of the drug group GlaxoSmithKline, James Nicol of the engineering group Tomkins and David Harding of the bookmaker William Hill occupy other top slots.

The Guardian survey also reveals that five female directors were paid more than £1m last year - compared with none the previous year - but two made it into the exclusive league only because they received substantial payoffs.

Sir Martin Sorrell's one-off rewards make the WPP board this year's most expensive in the FTSE 100. Excluding WPP, however, the directors of Tesco emerge as the best rewarded for the second consecutive year.

The total boardroom pay rose from £26m to more than £31m in the last year. That dwarfs the £18m paid to the directors of BP, the UK's biggest company with a stock market value of £131bn. The market values Tesco at £25bn.

At the other end of the scale, the worst-paid employees work in the catering and hospitality industries, at companies such as Compass, Mitchells & Butler and Whitbread. Tesco is also among the companies with the lowest-paid staff.

A new army special forces regiment was involved in the operation that led to the killing of an innocent man at Stockwell tube station in south London last week, the Guardian can reveal.

The Special Reconnaissance Regiment, set up in April to help combat international terrorism, was deployed in the surveillance operation which led to the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, a Brazilian electrician, on July 22, according to Whitehall sources.

Yesterday Whitehall sources told the Guardian that soldiers of the Special Reconnaisance Regiment, modelled on an undercover unit that operated in Northern Ireland, was engaged in "low-level intelligence behind the scenes" when the Brazilian was shot. There was "no direct military involvement in the shooting", the sources said.

It is believed to be the first time the new regiment was engaged in an operation.

The regiment absorbed 14th Intelligence Company, known as "14 Int", a plainclothes unit set up to gather intelligence covertly on suspect terrorists in Northern Ireland. Its recruits are trained by the SAS.

Geoff Hoon, the then defence secretary, said the unit had been formed to meet a worldwide demand for "special reconnaissance capability".

Islamic radicals, like Hitler, cultivate support by nurturing grievances against others. Islamists, like Hitler, scapegoat Jews for their problems and want to destroy them. Islamists, like Hitler, decree that the punishment for homosexuality is death. Hitler divided the world into Aryans and subhuman non-Aryans, while Islamists divide the world into Muslims and sub-human infidels. Nazis aimed for their Thousand-Year Reich, while Islamists aim for their eternal Caliphate. The Nazi party used terror to achieve power, and from London to Amsterdam, Bali to New York, Egypt to Turkey, Islamists are trying to do the same.

The two fascisms, one racial and one religious, one beaten and the other resurgent, are evil in both their ideology and their methodology, in their supremacism, intolerance, belief in violence and threat to democracy.

The support of Islamic fascism spans BritainÂ’s Left. The wacko Socialist Workers Party joined forces with the Muslim Association of Britain, the democracy-despising, Shariah-law-wanting group, to form the Stop the War Coalition. The former Labour MP George Galloway created the Respect Party with the support of the MAB, and won a seat in Parliament by cultivating Muslim resentment.

Richard Ayliffe, 39, a chronic sufferer from Dudley in the West Midlands, says he has tried conventional treatments but the only thing to have brought him relief is magic mushrooms. Without them he says he would not be able to hold down a job.

"People are quite sympathetic at first but once you've let them down for the third time sympathy turns to exasperation," he says. "Magic mushrooms have enabled me to lead a normal life."

Like other members of ClusterBusters - an online forum where cluster headache sufferers swap notes and discuss alternative treatments - Ayliffe claims that taking magic mushrooms not only interrupts his cycle of headaches, but buys him longer remission periods between attacks. Some sufferers claim that since taking mushrooms they have been pain-free for up to two years.

And, because an attack can come at any time many members stockpiled mushrooms ahead of the government's ban this month.

Last week one member of the group, a 41-year-old father of two who asked to be identified only as Lee, admitted he had already taken one dose in contravention of the ban.

Under the Drugs Act 2005 possession of magic mushrooms is a class A offence punishable by a seven-year prison sentence. Previously, only psilocybin and other preparations of mushrooms, but not the fresh product itself, were controlled.

"The way I see it, either I break the law or forgo the most effective treatment I have found in nearly six years," says Lee.

Since he began taking mushrooms a year ago, he says the intensity of his headaches has shrunk by a third and the remissions between attacks have lengthened to 40 days.

"It's absolutely incredible," he says. "I can't tell you how much magic mushrooms have changed my life."

Five anti-war activists demonstrating against a new ban on unauthorised protests in the vicinity of parliament were arrested yesterday as the police moved to uphold the controversial new law.

The ban on spontaneous protests within half-a-mile of Westminster which have not been cleared by police came into force at midnight on Sunday.

No protest will be lawful unless prior police approval has been sought in writing and granted at least 24 hours before the start of the demonstration. One of those present at yesterday's demonstration was Lauren Booth, the sister of Cherie Blair.

"This is all about silencing critics of the war in Iraq and ID cards and denying people the right to free speech," she said. "If you heard on television that someone in another country was banned from gathering near a government building to stage a legitimate protest you would probably think thank goodness that kind of thing doesn't happen in this country," she said.

Police initially tried to act in a low-key way to prevent the largely symbolic protest. But, faced with the possibility that the new law would be shown to be unenforceable on its first day, they eventually moved in against a group of about 50 people wearing black gags to symbolise the "infringement" of their right to protest. The arrests occurred as Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour MP for Islington North, was speaking to the gathering.

The police took photographs of many of the protesters and handed out leaflets warning they were involved in an unauthorised protest.

Lindsey German, convener of the Stop the War Coalition and one of the protest organisers, said the new law meant police could now decide who was allowed to demonstrate, which was "totally unacceptable".

The Home Office says that the new laws simply put static protests on the same footing as processions, for which police also need to be notified.

A former London schoolboy accused of being a dedicated al-Qaida terrorist has given the first full account of the interrogation and alleged torture endured by so-called ghost detainees held at secret prisons around the world.

For two and a half years US authorities moved Benyam Mohammed around a series of prisons in Pakistan, Morocco and Afghanistan, before he was sent to Guantánamo Bay in September last year.

Mohammed, 26, who grew up in Notting Hill in west London, is alleged to be a key figure in terrorist plots intended to cause far greater loss of life than the suicide bombers of 7/7. One allegation, which he denies, is of planning to detonate a "dirty bomb" in a US city; another is that he and an accomplice planned to collapse a number of apartment blocks by renting ground-floor flats to seal, fill with gas from cooking appliances, and blow up with timed detonators.

In an statement given to his newly appointed lawyer, Mohammed has given an account of how he was tortured for more than two years after being questioned by US and British officials who he believes were from the FBI and MI6. As well as being beaten and subjected to loud music for long periods, he claims his genitals were sliced with scalpels.

He alleges that in Morocco he was shown photos of people he knew from a west London mosque, and was asked about information he was told was supplied by MI5. One interrogator, he says, was a woman who said she was Canadian.

Drawing on his notes, Mohammed's lawyer has compiled a 28-page diary of his torture. This has been declassified by the Pentagon, and extracts are published in the Guardian today.

Recruits to some groups connected to al-Qaida are thought to be instructed to make allegations of torture after capture, and most of Mohammed's claims cannot be independently verified. But his description of a prison near Rabat closely resembles the Temara torture centre identified in a report by the US-based Human Rights Watch last October.

Furthermore, this newspaper has obtained flight records showing executive jets operated by the CIA flew in and out of Morocco on July 22 2002 and January 22 2004, the dates he says he was taken to and from the country.

If true, his account adds weight to concerns that the US authorities are torturing by proxy. It also highlights the dilemma of British authorities when they seek information from detainees overseas who they know, or suspect, are tortured.

Horizon publishes the results of specially commissioned research, modelling two possible dirty bomb scenarios: attacks on either London or Washington DC. The main conclusion is that the health risks from a dirty bomb explosion are localised to people who are close to the incident or are in contact with the contamination. Although the modelled attack scenarios could have wide-ranging economic repercussions, the majority of the population of either capital city would have only a negligible increase in their risk of developing cancer.