No, we don't need anti-terror laws. Plotting to blow up a ship is thoroughly illegal anyway without adding new laws designed to provoke terror rather than stop it.

If you think that secret evidence - i.e. evidence that the defence isn't allowed to know about so it can't challenge properly - is in the interests of the DEFENDENTS, then you really are on another planet. As for a "fair trial", who do you think is leaking all that stuff about "napalm bombs" and "IRA training manuals" to the media? Hint: it's not people well-disposed to the defence. The cops are already selectively leaking stuff that make people like you panic and support their civil liberties being taken away - this right should be taken away from them by having ALL the facts that the judge has been allowed to see in the public arena, like they are with every other trial. Why "special treatment" in this case?

Anti-terror laws should be better described as "laws against freedom of speech and freedom of association". Anything else that might be called terrorism - plotting to kill, maim or destroy property - are, as has been seen elsewhere, already illegal, so what do we need new laws for - except to intimidate non-conformist political thought?

If it doesn't bother you that you're not allowed to even know why bail has been denied to most of the suspects - and therefore why, innocent or guilty, they will spend at least a year in jail before they get to trial - then you are truly one of those who would sacrifice freedom for security and thus will get neither.

It isn't certain that they'll be charged under the terrorism act, though, and they won't be spending a year in jail, I'll bet. Most of them'll be out in early November, facing firearm charges.