A suspected terrorist has escaped the authorities after being placed on a control order, in the latest embarrassment to hit the Home Office.
It was understood the man, who has not been named, escaped from a mental health unit and has been on the run for two weeks.
The British citizen was believed to have climbed through a window to evade staff at the London unit.
Control orders act as a loose form of house arrest, usually placing suspects under a curfew and requiring them to report regularly to police. The man now on the run will have been suspected of playing a role in international terrorism, possibly linked to al-Qaida groups.
It was thought he was handed his control order on April 5.
His admission to the mental health unit is understood to have been a more recent development and would not normally have been part of the control order conditions.
A Home Office spokeswoman said: "Any breach of security will be investigated on a case-by-case basis. We do not discuss individual cases."
Control orders were brought in at the beginning of last year as a replacement for indefinite detention without trial or charge.
The Home Office does not reveal the identities of people on control orders. The Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, Nick Clegg, said: "Since control orders were the government's flagship anti-terrorism measure, this is a huge embarrassment for them.
"As we have always made clear, the danger of control orders is that they short-circuit due process and keep suspects in a state of limbo. Our aim must be to get suspects into court and, where they are guilty, convicted.
"This should act as a spur for the government to develop more robust ways to get suspects into court in the first place, such as using intercept evidence."
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