UK police prevented by law from taking fingerprints and DNA from terror suspects

Police are prevented by law from taking fingerprints and DNA from terrorist suspects on control orders, John Reid, the outgoing Home Secretary, admitted yesterday. The revelation shocked opposition parties who said it was the first they knew of this startling omission in the 2005 Prevention of Terrorism Act.

Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, called it ''an astonishing revelation''. He added: ''It merely underlines the profound flaws in the whole control-order regime.''

Six people on control orders have absconded, their whereabouts still unknown.

Cerie Bullivant, 24, Lamine Adam, 26, and his brother, Ibrahim, 20, are among Britain's most wanted men after vanishing last month. The Adams's third brother, Anthony Garcia, was one of the fertiliser bomb plotters and was jailed for life in April.

Bestun Salim, an Iraqi, vanished from his Manchester flat last summer after being charged with seven offences of breaching his control order.

Another suspect, known only as AD, escaped from a mental health unit last September, and is alleged to have been a friend of Asif Hanif, a British man who detonated a suicide bomb in Israel.

The final absconder is a Pakistani who fled in January.