Free Abu Qatada

Abu Qatada on his release from prison 13 November 2012

Abu Qatada has never been accused or arrested on any criminal charge in the UK, let alone convicted. He has no links with terrorism or al-Qaeda and he never ever agreed or endorsed what was done in 9/11 in America or 7/7 in the UK.

http://daithaic.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/london-bombings.html

If he had terrorist links there is sufficient legal provision in the increasingly draconian and “catch all” anti-terrorist legislation to arrest him under British Law and put the evidence before a Judge and Jury and to prove a case beyond reasonable doubt as under British Law a defendant is innocent until proven guilty.

The fact that he has never been charged in a British Court speaks eloquently of the bankruptcy of the security consensus against him which has led to him being routinely defamed as a “terrorist mastermind” and the opinion of the discredited Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon, who described Abu Qatada as the "spiritual head of the mujahedin in Britain" is oft quoted unthinkingly in the British media. Once again, if there was a shred of evidence to back this up, where is it?

Abu Qatada being driven from Long Lartin prison

British Fascists demonstrating in support of Abu Qatada's deportation

Instead having lived in the UK as a refugee from oppression for over 20 years Abu Qatada has been subject to a scarcely legal campaign of vilification and oppression which has meant that over the past 10 years, without charge, he has spent 7 years in prison and the rest of the time under various forms of house arrest of the type Britain regularly condemns in “Dictatorships.” Not dictatorships like Bahrain you understand where “call me Dave” was trying to hawk arms only last week but only dictatorships “freedom loving nations” like Britain disapprove of. Not places like Chechnya you understand where the West has shamefully turned a blind eye for political expediency to Putin’s brutal genocide, in the best Tsarist tradition, against a “freedom loving” Muslim people who have always resisted Russian occupation and oppression.  

Abu Qatada was born in Bethlehem in 1960 and spent his early life in Jordan. He fled to Pakistan in 1989 claiming political persecution and eventually arrived in the UK in 1993. Abu Qatada was part of a wave of Islamists who sought refuge in the UK during the 1980s and 90s, often exiled from the Arab regimes they were trying to overthrow. Bethlehem has a certain tradition of breeding radicals who are uncomfortable with the established order. Let us consider Abu Qatada’s chronology over the past 10 years as a “customer” of the world’s finest legal system in the Mother of Democracy?

• ·         October 2002: Detained without charge
• ·         March 2005: Law Lords ban detention without charge, ordering release. Issued with control order - form of house arrest restricting movements
• ·         August 2005: Detained again, pending deportation
• ·         February 2007: Loses appeal at Siac
• ·         April 2008: Court of Appeal says deportation to regime that tortures would breach human rights
• ·         June 2008: Bailed - but then detained five months later on new evidence of risk
• ·         February 2009: Law Lords back deportation, saying the Court of Appeal got it wrong
• ·         January 2012: European Court overturns that decision, saying Jordan will not provide a fair trial
• ·         November 2012: Wins appeal at SIAC and is released on bail

In December 2005 he made a video appeal to the kidnappers of British peace activist Norman Kember in Iraq. He is an acknowledged Islamic Scholar whose views are influential, are clearly and openly argued using his right of free speech. People are free to accept or reject his arguments and to argue against them, I certainly would.  His only crime has been to argue his point of view and in an open and mature democracy surely we have the courage of our convictions to openly argue against his views. Instead we have a British Home Secretary  behaving like 19^th Century Prussian Interior Minister in charge of a Police State fuming that she is going to “get rid” of Abu Qatada.

Abu Qatada on BBC's Panorama in 2001

He would soon be “got rid” of in Jordan from which he fled as a political opponent of the regime in 1989. Behind the façade of “Plucky Little King Mark 2” you have a British created authoritarian statelet with all the apparatus of repression including hangings, torture and an omnipresent and feared Secret Police. Indeed the only basis for his frequent labelling as a “Terrorist” comes from the discredited Jordanian legal system which lacks any pretence of independence. In 1999, Abu Qatada (who you recall had left Jordan in 1989) was sentenced in absentia by Jordan to life imprisonment with hard labour for conspiracy to carry out terror attacks, and subsequently in 2000 to a further 15 years for his alleged involvement in a plot to bomb tourists attending Millennium celebrations in Jordan. We have never seen the evidence from this Police State to justify these convictions but because of Abu Qatada’s legal battle the Jordanian State has had to disclose that “evidence” was obtained using torture. 

http://daithaic.blogspot.co.uk/2008/04/britain-in-iraq.html

At an earlier hearing in October this year Presiding judge Mr Justice Mitting has already said the Jordanian terror suspect's links to an alleged bomb plot looked to be "extremely thin". He stated that the "only evidence" of a link was that Abu Qatada had paid $5,000 (£3,100) for a computer. Reviewing legal documents, Mr Justice Mitting said they suggested that an alleged co-conspirator - who has claimed he was tortured before giving evidence - had been given the money by Abu Qatada. "If that's the only evidence in the case... it's difficult to understand on what basis the appellant [Abu Qatada] could be prosecuted," the judge said. In Abu Qatada’s legal battle the judges of the Court of Appeal have been crystal clear on their view of torture in English Law 

“For hundreds of years the Common Law had abhorred the use of torture and refused to deal in its poisonous fruits.”

It is time to bring this Abu Qatada farce organised at our expense by the Security Establishment to an end not by deporting Abu Qatada but by releasing him and arguing openly with him. Consider what he has had to battle through to establish his Civil Rights in English Law. When arrested he has never been allowed to see the evidence against him nor have his lawyers. Instead this is shown to a “Special Advocate” who cannot speak to him or his lawyers who must then argue on his behalf? Even now he is on bail he is under a 16 hr. curfew, forbidden from making public statements or being quoted, forbidden to have a computer, mobile phone or use the internet and forbidden from meeting a whole range of named individuals. It is reminiscent of the farcical restrictions when Gerry Adams voice could not be broadcast on UK media for 12 years and will undoubtedly be as much of a laughing stock in time. It is time that a democracy released this individual whom Britain has effectively held without trial, charge or evidence for over 10 years. It is time that a long line of Home Secretaries stopped behaving like Prussian or Tsarist popinjays and reaffirmed their commitment to Civil Rights.

Home Secretary Theresa May

Let us remember why the European Convention on Human Rights which Abu Qatada has relied on is there in the first place. In 1932 Adolph Hitler won a democratic mandate as Chancellor of Germany. His first task was to eliminate his opponents and ensure such an election could never take place again. Real judges were replaced by the Nazi hanging judges, civil rights and the right to strike were abolished and the Police under the odious Reinhard Heydrich, “the Hangman,” who stood out as one of the cruellest and most brutal mass murderers in Nazi Germany, went for Jews, Communists, Gays and the disabled, Courts became places where justice was denied and hospitals became places where people were killed. Reinhard Heydrich became the Head of Interpol, Germany hosted the Olympics and the owner of the Daily Mail (which is leading the Abu Qatada press pack) praised Hitler for his “superhuman efforts” on behalf of the German people.

http://daithaic.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/the-daily-heil.html

After the war the Allied Powers were determined that police states could never be created in Western Europe nor the Rule of Law be perverted. Spurred on by Winston Churchill’s urging  The European Convention on Human Rights entered into force on 3 September 1953 and established the European Court. It has nothing to do with the European Union and everything to do with the freedoms we fought for and the tyranny Britain fought against in World War II.

So let us now as a mature democracy release Abu Qatada and begin and win the argument against his views. Let us stop dealing in poisonous fruits.