To not give a toss about Abu Qatada's human rights?

[wannaBe]

So he came here on a fake passport, is a radical suspected of plotting God-knows-what, and yet we apparently shouldn't deport him back to where he came from (regardless of the fact he is here illegally) because he might be persecuted back in Jordan?

Now if this was an innocent person who meant no harm to others who had come here illegally I would be more sympathetic.

But it's not.

Live by the sword, die by the sword and all that.

There's nothing wromg with human rights per se, but I think eh discussion should be around how many rights one has automatically because one is human, and how many one has to earn or can lose, for example by hurting others.

The thing is MrsTerryPrattchet - The Human Rights bill should be there to protect innocents , this Abu is not innocent and is clearly milking our system you and i pay for.
With do gooders like you around people like him will always get away with it!
Stealing a piece of bread is one thing, but to commit terrorism is another.
He wouldnt care if you got blew up as that is what terrorists are all about.

The law is well and truely mixed up and its the victims that are made to suffer and given next to no help whilst he walks about with no care in the world in a house paid for by the state

If your human rights can be taken away or ignored because of what you've done or said then by definition they are NOT human rights. They are priviledges. Human rights belong to a person on the basis of their mere existence. So what a lot of people are advocating here is in fact that human rights be down graded to priviledges, dependent on meeting criteria set by persons unknown.

Seriously people, think about what you are saying. Do you really want YOUR life, or YOUR CHILDRENS' lives, to be a priviledge instead of a right? Do you really want to give the state permission to tortue YOU or YOUR CHILDREN if they believe it's in everybody else's interest to do so?

I am genuinely that any intelligent person would think human rights should be anything other than absolute.

pumpkin my example was murder not stealing bread. I am proud to be a do-gooder what with me wanting to do good and all.

He wouldn't care if I got blown up and that is what makes me better than him. I do not understand the idea that we should sink to the level of the worst people in order to prove some sort of point. We should endeavor to be better than them and show, by example, why democracy and human rights are a good thing.

tethersend, you are so right.

I am very unsettled by the number of people on this thread who are on the slippery slope to the gulags.

How does your 'right as a child not to be physically assaulted in school' differ from the UK's assault laws? A school isn't a Royal Palace and thus outside the jurisdiction of British law.

Corporal punishment was legal in British schools until a ruling by the ECHR forced a change in the law

I have literally no idea what your second point refers to since I wasn't aware that the UK authorities were in the habit of mowing citizens down, or that they required a law to tell them not to when there is already a law in place for such things.

Northern Ireland shoot to kill policy ruled unlawful by the ECHR.

And IIRC we already had electoral law before the ECHR told us we had to hold elections. I'm sure I'm not imagining all those elections.

British citizens in Gibraltar banned from voting until a ECHR ruling in 1999.

As I said earlier, you may have been protected, but it's very short sighted to assume everyone else is in the same situation.

there are a fair few dodgy dealers from overseas & living here already who have got away with nasty things using the human rights law to hide behind. this law is a good one BUT it needs to be used properly

much as I think that this man is loathsome and should be attached to a rocket and blasted back to where he crawled from, he has rights.

To deny him those rights would be the start on a very slippery slope. when he is finally dispatched from this country it will be after due and fair process which can not be argued with or claimed to be unjust.

It may well seem unfair that he is using the human rights act, laws and money of a country he despises, but the act and these laws protect the rights of people who need and deserve to be protected, you wont hear about them because they are not newsworthy or sensational enough

OK, so he's accused of some form of involvement in certain terrorist acts. Those are not crimes against humanity. If they were he wouldn't be up to be deported to Jordan, he'd be appearing in front of the International Criminal Court.

Loving your work here, TheUnMember!

"Stealing a piece of bread is one thing, but to commit terrorism is another."

In some countries, stealing bread is a serious crime which can be punishable by amputation of the hands.

According to the law of the land, these people should have their human rights revoked for committing the serious crime of stealing bread according to some posters.

This thread is beginning to worry me.

Northern Ireland shoot to kill policy ruled unlawful by the ECHR

Your inflammatory rhetoric about 'being gunned down in the street' is only applicable if you were a high-ranking member of the IRA. You'll forgive me if I don't shed any tears over the killing of terrorists.

British citizens in Gibraltar banned from voting until a ECHR ruling in 1999 - Not banned from voting at all, but unable to vote in the European Parliament elections. And the reason for their being unable to vote? Spain would have vetoed any attempt by Britain to include Gibraltarians in the UK vote for European Elections due to their muddleheaded belief that Gibraltar belongs to them.

Corporal punishment was legal in British schools until a ruling by the ECHR forced a change in the law

Once again, inflammatory rhetoric, this time about 'physical assault'. It might surprise you to discover that an awful lot of people (although I'm not one of them) believe that corporal punishment should return to schools because it did an awful lot of good for badly-behaved children.

It had already been outlawed in the state system before this act came in, of course, and was only available in private schools - schools, I should remind you, where attendance is voluntary and fees are paid.

I have nursed people who most of us would find truly objectionable including some very notorious murderers and paedophiles.

It is not my position to judge. I can dislike the crime, behaviour or attitudes. But not the person.

Can you imagine if people based their treatment of others upon their own opinion of them- their sexuality, marital status, creed or culture, the way they lived their lives, whether they ate meat or not, whether they 'deserved' medical, social, educational or other attention .....? Travel a little way along this pathway and one will see an increasing toleration of torture and corrupt police/state practices.

I find that those who say 'so what?' to the possibility of somebody deemed 'evil' being tortured haven't considered the fact that torture is often used against the innocent including families, friends, colleagues and especially children-the torture of children is allegedly happening in Syria now.

Total judgemental chaos.....Bit like MN on a bad day!

I am terrified to ask how many people on this thread want to bring the hanging back.

And if corporal punishment did so much good for children, then why did I (and others) see the same old pupils being slippered or caned over and over again in the schools I went to (mixture of state, church controlled and public)?

It was always the same children punished in this manner....over and over again. Can anybody tell me how this 'improved' their behaviour?

How much is all this costing - surely taking cases through the UK courts and then on to the european ones must be fantastically expensive?

Plus the cost of detaining him.

If so, where is all the money coming from?

Aren't we being taken for a very, very expensive ride here?

It's because of things like this that the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights is in place, and why respect for any human's right to life is important.

pendeen well we could always just not bother trying to deport him? That would be pretty cheap.

Well, you can limit someone's human rights by due process of law (else we could eg never imprison anyone).

But if you use information obtained by torture, then you are complicit in that torture, and that is wrong. It is also unlawful for UK, as we are signatories the the UN convention banning its use, and that explicitly covers, inter alia, the Abu Qatada scenario of a trial that may use evidence obtained by torture.

So I think it was right to wait for assurances from Jirdan that no such material would be used at his trial there.

I also think the UK courts should now consider if he is a vexatious litigant, and (I hope) put an end to his seeking further legal rulings when those already made are both sound and comprehensive.

There is no conflict with human rights in any of that.

entropygirl maybe but I was actually thinking of quite the other thing...

I don't want him to be tortured but OOH perhaps he should have thought about the outcome of his behaviour and how it might come to this or did he just see GB coming and stick 2 fingers up at us.

we have a good system here but I noticed Christopher .... (can't remember his name) got removed very quickly to the USA. Is that because he couldn't use taxpayers money for his legal costs?

It had already been outlawed in the state system before this act came in, of course, and was only available in private schools - schools, I should remind you, where attendance is voluntary and fees are paid.

Corporal punishment was banned in UK state schools 1987 following a ruling by the ECHR on 25 April 1978 Tyrer v the United Kingdom

Everything else you said illustrates perfectly why the ECHR is so important. Because people will find a way to justify breaching the human rights rights of others if they are so inclined.

one (wo)man's terrorist is another (wo)man's freedom fighter.

To some people George W Bush and Tony Blair are terrorists and Gerry Adams and Abu Qatada are heroes or freedom fighters.

flatpackhamster It's your world view that's giving rise your disdain for other people, which is one of the fundamental reasons the ECHR and UN Declaration of Human Rights exist.

I'll start by saying that I am a Solicitor specialising in Asylum, Immigration and Human Rights law, so you can probably guess what angle I'm going to take... I would like to say, though, that it is really refreshing to me to read so many positive comments about the Human Rights Act and how this guy's Human Rights are as important as ours. If we allow someone to be sent to a country where evidence obtained by torture is used against them, we are complicit in the torture. I am extremely glad to live in a country where Human Rights are respected, regardless of whether or not someone is a British Citizen. Someone asked why Abu Qatada's rights should be respected, given that he is here illegally. The answer is simply because he is a human and because he is here. The Government is obliged to respect the Human Rights of all those in their territory, regardless of whether or not they are here legally.

It makes me very sad to also see so many comments saying that his rights should not be respected. Of course they should if the UK wants to be seen as the progressive, sensible country which it is.

I'm not for one second saying that he's necessarily a nice human being, but he is a human being and shame on you for suggesting that he isn't. He's someone's husband, child, father...

The Human Rights Act is an important piece of legislation that protects all of us. If you think it doesn't then perhaps you might want to look in to it a bit more and get your facts straight. I am proud to live in a country with a Human Rights Act. Every day I see the effect on people who do not have that luxury. Women who have been raped and given AIDS, men who have been castrated, people who have watched their family members be murdered by the State, people who have been whipped for dressing in a certain manner, people whose homes and entire lives have been destroyed by the very people who should be protecting them. Excuse me if I'm ranting on a little bit but you should be grateful that we live in a civilised country that protects those who have the good fortune to be present on its shores. Listening to someone telling you about how they have been tortured is horrific (though obviously nothing compared to what they have been through themselves). Torture is absolutely abhorrent and no one, NO ONE, deserves that, regardless of their actions.

Loving your work here, TheUnMember!

Thank you Snorbs, I do feel it's kind of pointless though. Some people can't be reasoned with and my gut tells me that people prepared to argue against human rights probably fall into that category.