The government"s chief prosecutor has launched an outspoken attack on plans by David Blunkett, the home secretary, to try terrorists without juries and in secret. Ken Macdonald QC, the director of public prosecutions, says in an article in today"s Sunday Times that plans for trials without juries of some terror suspects would undermine public faith in the criminal justice system. In his attack on proposals expected in Blunkett"s forthcoming draft terrorism bill to limit the right to jury trial for Al-Qaeda and other Islamic terror suspects, Macdonald says: "To be effective against...terrorism, we need to call on legislation that is clear, flexible and proportionate to the threat." Nobody wants to throw out the baby with the bath water; we do not want to fight terrorism by destroying precisely those things terrorism is trying to take away from us. "Open, liberal democracies fail if they try to protect themselves by becoming illiberal, closed and repressive." Macdonal says he favours proposals by ministers to allow telephone-tapping evidence from MI5 and police to be used in open court. He also believes that "minor players" in terrorist plots should be offered some immunity from prosecution in return for information. But he emphasizes: "Changes to the criminal trial process have to be approached with great caution and a clear head." Macdonald, who as head of the Crown Prosecution Service, has overall responsibility for charging and prosecuting all terrorist suspects in England and Wales, says that some basic rights "cannot be negotiated away in a free and democratic society". So criminal trials must remain routinely open and take place before independent and impartial tribunals. In Britain people have great affection for trial by jury. Public faith in public justice will not survive abandonment of these fundamental principles. Macdonald waited to launch his broadside until after last week"s Queen"s speech, when the Home Office said draconian new counter-terrorism measures would be contained in a draft bill, expected to be published in the new year. The bill would allow for anti-terror courts without juries, which are expected to hear evidence in secret before special security-cleared judges. Macdonald"s strong comments amount to the clearest signal yet that Blunkett will face a fierce battle not just in parliament but in Whitehall over the plans. Other senior legal figures including Lord Woolf, the lord chief justice, have previously criticised government plans to limit trial by jury in ordinary criminal trials. However, Macdonald is the first to come out against the new proposals to limit the right to a jury trial in terrorism cases. We can infer from the text that