The UK government has frozen the UK assets of the Icelandic bank Landsbanki under the 2001 Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act passed after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the USA. This is an outrageous and deeply worrying perversion of the intent of the Act. The UK government may have a financial dispute with the Icelandic government, but not even the most paranoid denizen of Whitehall would be able to find a link between Icesave and Landsbanki and terrorism. It would be farcical - true political vaudeville worthy of a tin-pot dictatorship - if it weren’t part of a worrying pattern of executive encroachment on our basic freedoms.
