Abu Qatada must be the most loathed man in Britain. The so-called ‘Islamic’ hate preacher has resisted deportation to his birth country of Jordan, where he was convicted of terrorism in 1999. Instead, he has cost the government nearly £2 million in legal costs and police time in his fight to remain in a country that he dismisses as a dunghill. Indeed, we Brits may be dirty, immoral and evil, but he seems happy to accept Legal Aid and benefits that we provide. As such, I fully understand the outrage that the British public feel with every day that we must tolerate him on our soil. It’s a separate discussion about racial intolerance on our society, but I think the progress we are making towards a tolerant society is threatened by people of Qatada’s ilk.
Unfortunately, thanks to the incompetence of the Home Secretary and the inevitable caution of the judiciary (remember it is claims that, in the hands of the Jordanian authorities, Qatada could suffer torture), the cleric has proved impossible to remove. Remember, our justice system, as with all good systems, is built on the premise that ‘it is better to allow one hundred guilty men to go free than to wrongly imprison one innocent man’. Though it is not Qatada’s guilt that is in question, we cannot deport him without any less certainty that he wouldn’t be tortured than somebody we considered to be innocent. The greatest victory we can have over Qatada is to not forget our principles as a liberal democracy, no matter how much provocation we must endure. We must follow Norway’s example in dealing with the murderer and depressing loser that is Anders Breivik (however you spell it!).
Fortunately, the Jordanian government has ratified a treaty which constitutes the strongest possible guarantee that they will not torture Qatada, not use evidence obtained by torture and will give him a fair trial. Our government will ratify the treaty by Friday, and will be able to make another attempt at deportation in a few months. I think it would be difficult for even the European Court of Human Rights to rule against us. But I can envisage the tide of euroscepticsm that would rock the country should Qatada be inflicted on us permanently. The wrong ruling would allow Nigel Farage’s UKIP to break the two party system.
But take from this article the good news: Justice is close to being done!
