So the Court of Appeal has refused permission for the Government to put the case one last time to the Supreme Court for the expulsion of Abu Qatada. Those who are in the know say that since Qatada’s legal team has been very careful throughout his protracted efforts to avoid justice there is no basis for any further appeal to be successful. Abu Qatada is here to stay, it would seem. And since we will not prosecute him ourselves he must be released and allowed to get on with life just the same as every other terrorist who manages to make it to the global haven for violent extremists which the UK has now become.Just to run through his career. In 1993 he arrived in the UK on a forged passport and claimed asylum. Having been allowed to stay in Britain he then issued a fatwa calling for the killing of converts from Islam, their wives and children, in Algeria. In 1999 he was found guilty in absentia of terrorism offences in Jordan. Not to be put off, in the same year he advocated the killing of Jews and praised those who had committed terrorist attacks on Americans. In 2001 he was arrested for being involved in the planning of a bomb attack in Strasbourg Christmas Market and for raising funds for Chechen Islamic terrorists. He then went on the run and was not recaptured until 2002. For the first time in 2005 he was released on conditional bail.
Efforts had begun to send him to Jordan to face justice. But his legal team were able to claim that his human rights would be breached if he were deported. He moved into the £800,000 taxpayer funded house that has been provided for him and his extensive family. For the first time, in 2009, the Law Lords found that he could be deported to Jordan on the basis of assurances made by the Jordanian and other foreign authorities. But at the same time he was awarded £2,500 in compensation because his detention was considered to have breached his human rights.
In 2012 the European Court ruled that Qatada could not be sent to Jordan while there was any risk of evidence being used against him which had been obtained by torture, and the Special Immigration Appeals Commission ruled that he should be released on bail even though he posed a risk to national security. Then in 2012 he was arrested again prior to deportation, but he was allowed to make a further appeal against deportation on the same human rights grounds. Just a few weeks ago the Court of Appeal agreed that Qatada was very dangerous but again refused to allow him to be deported to Jordan.
And now we learn that the Government will not be allowed an appeal on any grounds since Abu Qatada’s human rights must always take precendence over any national security risk, or risk to any other British people.
So Qatada is here to stay. Or will Theresa May finally take some action now that it seems we are at the end of the legal road? The French have already deported those considered to be a danger, even against the judgement of the European Court. And the sky didn’t fall in. This isn’t because human rights don’t matter, but because in the end each nation state must be responsible itself for its own security and its own judgement about the balance of national rights to security and the personal rights of migrating terrorists.
If Theresa May puts Qatada on a plane tomorrow she will undoubtedly gain more support than criticism. Indeed it would increase her own prospects for personal political advancement. But whatever opinions our politicians express will certainly make clear whether the security of the British people and nation matters to them. Over the years of the Qatada affair it does not seem that they have been very concerned at all, having a much more steady eye on the opinions of unelected Brussel’s officials. Who will break ranks first and call for the unilateral removal of Qatada to Jordan? More than that. Who will actually get the job done. There are undoubtedly a long line of ordinary people who would happily help this dangerous and hate-filled man onto the next plane out of the UK. At the end of the legal road it is now time for our politicians to put justice and national security above the so-called human rights of such a man.
It may not yet be possible to deport Qatada from the UK but, as far as I am aware, the European Court has not ruled, nor does it have the power to order that the UK government physical protect him and his family.
I suspect that, if Plod and the spooks withdrew, he would move himself and his family out of the town quite smartly. One can easily imagine the BNP, the EDL and others competing for the popular vote by removing this insult to humanity from the planet.
I’m not sure why you are suggesting that the EDL would commit any act of violence against any person? On what basis are you making such a serious claim?
Guilty of a stereotypical slip, tarring all violence against Muslims as arising from those groups that publicly (and bravely) oppose the vile cult.
Were some person able to dispatch Qatada (one way or another, choose your own meaning), I feel sure the enemedia led by the BBC would lay it at the door of the BNP or EDL, whether they had any evidence or not. Slipped into the same trap. Apologies. Still hope someone finds a way to help him on his way to ‘paradise’, where he’ll hopefully find 72 raisins awaiting him.
Raisins?!
There are many more than 72 for despatching him-and the enfeebled powers that be- for despatching, rather keeping him and his foul ilk.
Noa – there is some confusion amongst so-called Islamic scholars (there’s an oxymoron if ever there was such a thing!) as to the actually meaning of the Arabic phrase. Because the written word of the vile book looks like a demented spider dipped in ink has staggered across the page, Arabic is notoriously difficult to interpret accurately.
Some believe the part referring the benefits awaiting a martyr can be translate as ‘dark-eyed houris’, being residents of the harem, whilst others argue the correct translation is raisins or grapes. Who knows? Who cares?
As Billy Connelly ranted “Sod the virgins, give me two fire-breathing whores!”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtZ2k8xlTtU
It is good to see at least an implicit British Government acknowledgement of the sovereignty of Palestine on both Banks of the Jordan, where both legislatures have reserved Christian representation, in stark contrast to somewhere else that one could mention. And by all means let us exclude foreign preachers of hate from this country. Including Abu Qatada. Among other Islamists.
Such as the black-shirted pimp and heroin-trafficker Hashim Thaçi, who is somehow also both a Wahhabi and a Maoist – he really is what the more hysterical Tea Party attendees imagine President Obama to be. Such as the terrorist Akhmed Zakayev, whom this country currently harbours. Such as the recently apprehended terrorist Abdulmalik Rigi. And such as the even more recently arrested war criminal Ejup Ganic.
It is quite a list: Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq, and now Libya (polygamy legalised as the first act of the unelected government) and the Sixth Caliphate of Tunisia, with Syria and Lebanon to follow, with Iran next on the list after that, and with Chechnya and Xinjiang always bubbling away in the background. Doesn’t it make you proud?
However, also including those American and other ecclesiastics who have expressed racist views about Africans and others who do not share their liberal sexual morality. Also including Hans Küng, whose disparagement of Blessed John Paul the Great’s Polishness made and make them the authentic voice of the age-old Teutonic racism against the Slavs; Küng only gets away with it because he is Swiss.
Also including Avigdor Lieberman, the members of his party, and those who sit in coalition with them. Also including the EDL-supporting leaders of the Tea Party. Also including Geert Wilders, among a whole host of others whose presence most certainly would not be, and periodically is not, conducive to the public good. For example, the signatories to the Project for the New American Century. And the Patrons of the Henry Jackson Society.
Leading the great patron of, at least, those last. Rupert Murdoch. He, too, is not conducive to the public good. He, too, having renounced his allegiance to the Queen, is not only a preacher of hate, but a foreign preacher of hate. I wish that I could say that he was not allowed in my country, although his absence from a recent funeral strongly suggests that he no longer feels at liberty to set foot here. Though not as much as I wish that I could say that his fugitive son had been sent back here to stand trial. No one, including Abu Hamza, should be extradited from the United Kingdom to the United States until that has been accomplished. Nor while Congressman Peter King, that foreign preacher of hate, is still alive.