AT LONG LAST, AFTER EIGHT years of Abu Hamza’s lawyers milking the legal aid system, the mad Mullah is finally being extradited to the USA following a decision by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). Along with four others, he played the judicial system for all it was worth at the taxpayers expense. Appeal after appeal meant delay after delay and rich rewards for his lawyers, in whose financial interest it was to keep Mr Hamza a client.
Finally the legal hoops ran out, and hopefully the country will shortly be well rid of these Islamists: whether guilty or not, it will be for the American courts to decide, but either way, they will no longer be guests of the British taxpayer.
No doubt there will be one final try-on to keep these people in our company, but after the decision by the ECHR, any such further appeal could only add to the lawyers chest of lucre.
Last week President Sarkozy deported his own troublesome Islamist with apparently the kind of panache one associates with our Gallic cousins. Any long drawn out legal process (especially one that takes eight years to complete) would horrify the French president particularly in election year.
People like Abu Hamza should never be allowed to become such a bane on the taxpayer’s pocket or their patience . He should have departed these shores in the same exemplary fashion demonstrated by President Sarkozy. The vast majority of people in this country (including many Muslims) cared not one iota whether Hamza was given sufficient hoops to jump through in order to by time for himself.
It is outrageous that our politicians as well as our legal system allowed this tortuous process to happen. President Sarkozy has demonstrated that where there is a will, there is always a way. The trouble was, that there was no such will ever shown by our political class. Frightened by the ECHR and the human rights fashionista - who are the celebrity diners at numerous tables of the metropolitan elite. Our politicians feign due-process as their sole concern, no matter how they feel personally toward the accused.
THOSE WHO SUPPORT the European Union will no doubt make reference to the decision today by the ECHR to justify their undermining of British law by supporting its jurisdiction over our own lawmakers.
The ECHR comprise 47 judges who are, according to the convention, ‘of high moral character and to have qualifications suitable for high judicial office, or be a jurisconsult[1] of recognised competence’. The fact is, is that such jurisconsults have been regarded (In many of the 47 cases) as nothing more than imposters with very little legal experience. The Convention description referred to above says very little about any previous judicial service as a qualification for sitting as a judge on the ECHR.
Yet this country has handed over to the ECHR the final say on any particular judgement, or the suitability of any piece of legislation that the electors of the United Kingdom chooses to bring into law. The ECHR has done nothing to convince the British people of its right to oversee the decisions we the British people elected our politicians to make.
The ECHR has no democratic pedigree that engages the people of Europe. Like all components (and yes, I know the ECHR is separate) of the EU, the democratic pedigree is a counterfeit.
Yet we obey its every decision to the letter, which is partly why Abu Hamza managed to outstay any welcome he thought he had for so long. The case of Abu Hamza does little to help the ECHR to recover any kind of legitimacy it once thought it had.
In fact, if one were cynical enough, one could suggest that the ECHR judgement was given to counter its critics, whose voices have recently become so plentiful and deafening; that the ECHR feared that dreaded disease associated with such staid and amateurish institutions – reform. Which would soon come knocking if they did not in some way appease their critics.
ABU HAMZA AND HIS associates, if that is not a too personal term, have become the pawns of ECHR politics; if that is, our cynic is correct.
People like Hamza were, under the previous government, treated as eccentrics and so were allowed to speak as freely as they were eager to do. The last Labour government was a complete and utter disgrace. They never took the man seriously until the Finsbury Park Mosque in London was raided and various weapons were found.
The last Labour government that sat astride the governance of this country between 1997-2010, did untold damage to our nation’s culture. They charged their critics with racism at every opportunity, and allowed the likes of Hamza to go freely about his nefarious business.
It was not until 9/11 that such people as Hamza were taken seriously by the then Labour government. London had earned the sobriquet Londonistan from the rest of Europe. We were a laughing stock. Then came the 7 July 2005 London bombings when 52 people were killed and 700 more injured. At last, at a sad cost, the Labour government took the Islamic threat seriously; but, as with the present coalition, they deferred ultimately to the ECHR, and so they set themselves upon such masochistic behaviour.
They knew that the British people cared little for the niceties of due process when it came to the likes of suspected Islamic terrorists. Yet our political class stood with straight backs saluting, like some colonial governor, the flag of due-process. Even in extremis, our politicians sought to suggest to us, due-process needs to take place.
Due-process the people could understand; if such a process had not had the ECHR tagged on to it. The people could always accept, if not fully understand the intricacies of British justice. They had, after all, elected those who did understand it to act on their behalf. But then those elected gave their one true democratic responsibility away to a European court.
Is it little wonder that our politicians are held in such low esteem by so many of the voters? It has taken eight years to deport Hamza. It is a fact to be ashamed of, not a justification for the existence of the European Court of Human Rights.
[1] ‘[A] jurisconsult is a professional who studies, develops, applies, or otherwise deals with the law. The term is widely used in American English, but in the United Kingdom and many Commonwealth countries it has only historical and specialist usage. ...’ Wikipedia.
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