am I alone in being very heartened that the alquaida operative is not being deported?

[Heathcliffscathy]

because we absolutely should not deport anyone under any circumstance who we know will be tortured.

a victory for justice and human rights today imo.

First of all, I never expressed an opinion one way or another.

Secondly, why on EARTH did you go holiday in a place you so obviously hold in contempt?

Do you think everyone there is indicative of policies like that? We're all the same, eh, and Brits who express opinions contrary to yours are just as bad?

Honestly, give others the same understanding and flexibility you expect or just get nowhere!

It's like all those election threads and slagging off and Tory/Labour fights. Oh, so productive. This is the here and now. This is what we have. What are we going to do?

But it's downright stupid to discount opinions just because they don't agree, IME.

It alienates people and gets everyone nowhere because people don't like feeling invalidated and patronised.

I applaud the postings that Edam has made. We have no moral or legal responsibility for these people.

I think asylum laws as they stand are stupid. If someone is in fear of their life because of State terrorism / torture / whatever then the solution is not to ship them off to a foreign country. The solution is to remove the oppressor Government. How ridiculous to 'punish' the victim (by turning his life upside down and removing him from family & friends) instead of the perpetrator. The UN would do far more for human rights if they did this; much better than individual countries pissing about with individual cases.

Tiger - I don't think they have manipulated anything. The rules are just being applied. It has highlighted a gap in the different evidence that is open to the courts and the tribunals - which needs to be addressed. But not by deporting someone to be tortured.

UFembear - that's a metric shot ton of Afghanistans you are proposing there. How do you suggest we assist the oppressed while we are busy building utopia?

Ufembear equals fembear obv. Stoopid phone.

Fem, this person was not an asylum seeker.

I've worked with asylum seekers since I was 15. This person was not one of them.

In fact I'll retype the whole thing.

Fembear - that's a metric shit ton of Afghanistans you are proposing there. How do you suggest we assist the oppressed while we are busy building utopia?

expat - I think they are now asylum seekers (conceptually if not legally) as the reason for them staying in this country is persecution if they are sent back.

They may have formally applied for asylum, but the reason they're not being sent back is because they're terrorist suspects and would be likely to be tortured as such. (Apparently there is evidence that they wouldn't be, but it's closed-session evidence so can't be used).

I believe they're guilty. But we need to be able to put them on proper trial, and for that, we need to be able to use intercept evidence, like practically everywhere else seems to. Re. the arguments that the use of intercept evidence compromises the work of the security services - plenty of ways to work around it have been devised. Other countries manage. How long it will take the new government to get the law changed, I don't know.

vesela - I agree the. Problem is not solved by compromising on Human rights. It is solved by fixing the evidence gap.

Human Rights are great in theory, but when it really comes down to practice, would you prefer the information about terror attacks to be obtained from one person (via torture, not always physical) that could then save hundreds from attack? What if one of those to be saved was a member of your family, especially your child? How would you feel about protecting the rights of the terrorist then?

There are I think good and sufficient reasons why all the evidence isn't given in public for these things and there are things that we don't need to know. I cannot think of any other European country that would keep these people on their soil (apart from Holland perhaps); so I don't know why the UK is keeping them. The Europeans are far more pragmatic than we are about such situations.

scaryteacher, sadly it doesn't work like that in practice. People have been known to give false information when tortured so torturing people is not a reliable method to obtain information that may save lives. It may have even cost lives.

As for whether any other European country would shelther these men, the decision is based on case law from the European court of human rights. The case law is in turn based on the European convention on human rights. The map below shows the countries that are signed up to it in blue.

signatories to the ECHR

All of the countries in blue are bound by the same law.

Scene 1.

Cold, squatted building in corner of London. Bare floorboards. A few bookshelves and posters adorn the walls.

A group of very young boys are huddled around a desk, close to a calor gas heater, drinking from cans.

Boy 1: OK. First item on the agenda. "How can we get more women involved in anarchism?"

Boy 2: Ffs, feminism is a bourgeois struggle. We don't want to get sucked into the feminism thing.

Boy 3: Mothers can't be anarchists. They exert power over children; they're necessarily excluded.

Boy 1: I don't think that being an anrchist means refusing power ... I think we need more women.

Boy 2: Ffs. There are loads of women. there's X, and Y, and Z.

Boy 1: They come to the parties, but they don't get involved with stuff.

Boy 2: That's because they f about with their f bourgois f* revolution. Ffs. they just don't get it.

Boy 1: But we need to get more women involved. We need to work out why they're not getting involved.

Boy 3: We don't need women. they're natural conservatives. Because they raise children. they can't be anarchists.

Boy 2: F this. Let's work on our leaflet about bashing the pigs and denouncing the idiocy of fluffy demonstrations without any violence. Ffs. I went on one the other day with a f kidsspace. Completely f* middle class.

Coolfonz - Sometimes the security services can be right though can't they? They claim they have evidence they can't show.

That may or may not be convenient to them, but until they can show these people are guilty they will not be imprisoned or deported to a country where they will be tortured. That seems inline with the rule of law.

Well, the fact that Russia is on there says it all. Many European countries will pay lip service to the ECHR and then ignore it...that's what I meant by other European countries being 'more pragmatic'.

The ECHR is incorporated into UK law so this decision was made by a English court. I believe most of Western Europe would similarly have incorporated the ECHR into their own laws and would have had to make a similar decision on that basis. The UK is very unusual amongst Western Europe in that it has done this very recently. Even in Russia, a person in a similar situation would have the right to appeal the European Court of Human Rights and they would have come to the same decision.

I think that the UK being a law abiding country is something that it should be proud about. I find it disturbing that so many people think that it should lean towards being a pariah state.

That's assuming in other countries that the suspects actually get to court in the first place..... I think the Lubyanka isn't entirely a museum yet, and I wouldn't lay odds in Russia on anyone surviving to appeal to the Court of Human Rights - pragmatic, as I said. I have a sneaking suspicion the French are too.

scaryteacher - That is an entirely different issue though - "Are there circumstances under which torture is permissible?"

To which the answer is 'of course' as it's always possible to construct a hypothetical situation where is clearly is (most of 24). The reality is that in general we don't know what suspects know, or what they need us to tell us. So the reality of your example is "would you prefer the information about terror attacks to be obtained from hundreds of people (via torture, not always physical) that could then save hundreds from attack?"

In general torture is not acceptable. If you want the man who put the nuclear bomb on the bus to tell you which bus then maybe. But that basically never happens.

scaryteacher - so we should be ashamed of following the rule of law?

Seem to recall an EU country sending a terrorist suspect back to a 3rd country to evade the article 3 (prohibition of torture) issue.

I assume that a 3rd country is legal though if there is no threat that the person would be tortured in the 3rd country?

All these people that hate human rights so much, why aren't you queuing up to move some where a bit closer to your liking. Plenty of places lack human rights. Anyone interested in a move to North Korea or Burma? Or maybe the UK should be a bit more "pragmatic" like them?

Oh nice, message deleted.

Shall I do you a nice post with lovely flowers?

The 12 guys were ACCUSED by the security services of being ready to bomb a shopping centre. They leaked to the media, it was all over the front of the BBC Online, they were going to bomb a shopping centre the next weekend.

Apart from the fact when the security services grabbed the guys there wasn't one jot of evidence. No bombs, no kit, no manuals, nothing.

They very well may have been illegal immigrants, trying to use study visas to get into the country. But at no point have they been identified as Al Quaida operatives.

So, once again, the British security services, who totally failed on 7-7, failed again. Like they did with their huge operation to arrest a kebab shop owner and his workers in Manchester, shooting a lad in Forest Gate who was completely innocent after a huge intelligence-led operation, De Menezes on the tube, again where the security services leaked to the media (and perjured themselves in court).

And now with these guys, they have dragged them through the courts, the courts acquitted them. If there was even a manual, a tape they could be sent to jail.

Take the so-called Blackburn Resistance, two lads who love(d) the A-Team and Rambo, who took stupid pictures of themselves in a public park, in the daytime, in front of many passers by. They were jailed as terrorists, had their lives wrecked by the security services. It is very easy to get a conviction on terrorism these days.

That is why these men can now not be deported as they might face torture as once again Mi5 have shown themselves to be racist gung-ho thugs...

Even as bombs are going off in the UK.

Even as actual ricin plots happen in the UK.

Even as men with bombs and guns are actually caught.

But no one cares about those cases, they aren't Muslims...