Free Republic

More than half of the most dangerous offenders released in the foreign prisoner scandal cannot be found, Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, admitted yesterday. Eight days after the Home Office disclosed that more than 1,000 foreign criminals, including killers, rapists and child abusers, had been released into the community, Mr Clarke told MPs that hundreds were still at large, including 49 of the most serious cases. Tony Blair promised "automatic deportation" in future for jailed foreigners. But the Prime Minister's get tough" pledge fell apart when it emerged that he was talking about "a presumption" that foreign prisoners would be...

By BETH GARDINER, Associated Press Writer LONDON - Prime Minister Tony Blair fired his law and order chief Friday and chose a new foreign secretary in a wide-ranging Cabinet shuffle a day after his party took a pounding in local elections. The Labour Party pulled 26 percent of the vote to the Conservatives 40 percent, a result that renewed calls from some quarters for the prime minister to step down. Home Secretary Charles Clarke, embroiled in a politically damaging furor over the failure to deport foreign criminals, confirmed that Blair had removed him from office. Defense Secretary John Reid was...

A WOMAN who was dragged from the street and raped at knifepoint by a foreign criminal freed from jail has called on Charles Clarke, the home secretary, to resign. Her attacker was allowed to go free by immigration officials who could have deported him after he finished serving a three-year jail term for robbery. The 40-year-old mother, who has been mentally scarred by the ordeal and has undergone intensive counselling, said her attacker "did not deserve to be alive". She said: "It has taken me a long time to get beyond this. It is something that will always be there....