Diary – 26 July 2018

Surely there is a bit of humbug in this outrage about the two remaining jihadi Beatles, Kotey and Elsheikh, and Sajid Javid’s difficult but correct decision to send them for trial in America. Suppose the grisly pair had been located a couple of years ago in Raqqa. And let’s suppose there was a Reaper drone overhead, and that British intelligence could help send a missile neatly through their windscreen. Would we provide the details — knowing that they would be killed without a chance for their lawyers to offer pleas in mitigation on account of their tough childhoods in west London? Would the British state, in these circumstances, have connived in straightforward extrajudicial killing? Too damn right we would. It was just such a drone strike that vaporised that other ‘Beatle’, Jihadi John, and I don’t remember hot tears being wept for him. These four ‘Beatles’ were responsible for killing at least 27 people, and there are credible accounts of other bestial behaviour. Of course we legally justify these drone strike assassinations as preventative: to stop future acts of terror in Syria. But that scarcely masks the reality that killing them is also retributive — payback for the filmed executions of innocent people. So why do we support these extra-judicial killings, with no due process, and panic at what might happen in American court? The best hope of bringing Kotey and Elsheikh to justice is in America, and in sending them there the UK government has not dropped its opposition to the death penalty. We had to balance two risks: the risk that they would be simply set loose, like so many other jihadis, to roam the streets of London again, or the small risk that they might receive the death penalty under the US system. Sajid Javid and I decided that the first risk was worse than the second.