EUROPEAN LAW MUST NOT OVER REACH ITSELF

Abu Hamza al-Masri and three other co-defendants have managed to evade American justice thanks to The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg (ECHR), who have ruled for a delay to their extradition while more detail is sought regarding the correction facility and the length of time they would serve in it if found guilty.

The three other men Babar Ahmad, Syed Talha Ashan and Haroon Rashid Aswat apparently complained that they could serve life without parole, in a prison, ADX Florence, whose living conditions breached their human rights.

The US has accused Abu Hamza of hostage taking and setting up a terror training camp in Colorado, while Haroon Aswat is accused of being a co-conspirator on the training camp.

Baba Ahmad is being charged with supporting the Taliban and targeting US Navy ships, as well fundraising through extremist web sites. Syed Ashen is being charged as a co-conspirator.

The ECHR is the bane of anti-terrorism and the nation state. As far as these four prisoners are concerned, they were put before every court of appeal in the land to fight their extradition. Their lawyer's presented their arguments,but they were rejected at every stage; which is why they sought solace from the ECHR.

The ECHR is the last refuge of the scoundrel. Our government signed up to this wretched institution, and are now forced to comply with its decisions. In other words our own laws appear to be worthless if they can be challenged by what is fast becoming a higher legal authority than the one we voted for.

What is the point of politicians presenting manifestos for us, the electorate, to vote upon, when any law they were elected to introduce has only a provisional status; dependent upon it going through unchallenged by the ECHR, or some other European institution?

These four terrorists will in all likelihood be extradited - eventually. But this misses the point. Are we a free nation, free to make our own laws without any kind of interference from any other country or institution?

We are a democratic nation, and it follows that our laws can only be challenged and changed by our own parliament or, ultimately, the British electorate. There should be no other body overseeing and changing this process: but our politicians' sold our freedom to the ECHR in name of European solidarity.

Abu Hamza has an ace to play which will influence our European progressive jurists while deciding his fate. Hamza is disabled. Missing an arm and nearly blind, he could be kept back if the ECHR decides that the conditions in an American prison do not meet their own high standards of human rights.

Hamza cannot believe his luck. He despises the West because he knows we are too weak to punish him in the sharia way. He and the thousands like him despise the West because we equate unrestricted latitude with progressiveness. We believe that if we treat these people with restraint and compassion, they will have some kind of Damascian conversion to our own way of life.

This is the inverted racism that social liberalism often falls foul of. I do not feel any anger, oddly enough, toward these four defendants, but I do feel great resentment for those jurists and our own politicians who gave them the power to act in such a way that we have to obey them

The ECHR is to be despised far more than the people who seek their help. These European jurists have attained a power of Olympian proportions. Every prime minister and president in every country within the EU whose predecessors have signed up to this court of last resort, should start to rethink their position.

I hope this coalition government will tear up any document that puts our law making at the mercy of the ECHR. But being a coalition of conservative and social liberals, I doubt that much will change.

These four should have already been on their way to the USA, long before they exhausted this country's system of appeal. Due process should have ended with this country's various processes of appeal. No other country or external institution should even have been allowed to comment upon the decisions arrived at by our own courts of law.

The final word on these defendants should have lain with the British judicial system, but was allowed, by politicians in this country, to bypass British jurisdiction with their support for Strasbourg.

I hope that all four will be extradited. But more than this, the individual European nations must, as democratic states return the legislative power of their nation back to the citizens who voted for legislative independence free from external interference.