Hyperbole and cheap shots are all-too-easy – what about the more difficult unanswered questions?
Why has Abu Qatada not stood trial in the UK?
We’re continually told he poses a grave threat to national security. Yet an entire decade after he was first detained in Belmarsh Prison, why has he still not faced criminal charges?
This is a man accused by MI5 of inciting terrorist acts during his ten years in Britain. Why hasn’t sufficient evidence against him been gathered by now?
Forget the age-old debate about why the Government won’t allow intercept
evidence in criminal trials. The last time we checked incitement and soliciting
murder were still very serious offences in this country. If the allegations are
true he should be put in the dock without delay. But as the Attorney General has
identified, we don’t believe in indefinite internment without trial in the
UK and you can’t just set aside the
Rule of Law and lock people up without charge instead.
So what is the problem?
Is it that pursuing Qatada in open court would embarrass the security agencies who dismissed suggestions Qatada was the “spiritual head of the mujahideen in Britain” when he arrived as a refugee in 1994 and said he wasn’t dangerous?
A trial might also revisit the uncomfortable CIA capture of two British residents in Gambia in 2002, leading to their rendition to Guantanamo. Maybe the Government previously felt deportation would avoid this awkwardness and ultimately prove “easier”. What about now?
If Jordan cannot guarantee that torture evidence won’t be used against Qatada why not try him here for crimes committed in that country?
Torture is abhorrent; its
prohibition under every norm of decency at home and abroad is non-negotiable.
The Court of Human Rights has shown understandable concern about Jordanian law
in ruling that Qatada cannot be deported there – torture, and evidence obtained
that way, is widespread. So why is the
Government now pondering an appeal against the Strasbourg ruling?
Our ministers
cannot champion human rights in the Arab Spring and then condone torture by
persevering with attempts to expel Qatada back to Jordan.
The UK asserts the right to try suspects
for the gravest crimes
anywhere in the world in our courts. Isn’t it time to exercise
that prerogative? If there is sound untainted evidence against him
Qatada should be tried in a British court. If
the threat he poses is so grave surely that would be preferable to sending him
back to an unsafe
Middle Eastern kingdom anyway?
Politicians are very good at pleading to the “Court of public opinion” - why won’t they trust a jury of twelve ordinary people to decide this man’s case in a British court?
