The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that five terror suspects, including notorious Islamist cleric Abu Hamza, can be deported to the United States — a decision welcomed by both David Cameron and Theresa May.
Last year, Hamza and three of the other men appealed to the ECtHR against extradition to the US on a whole host of grounds — including that they might face the death penalty and that their trials would be prejudiced. The Court found almost of all their grounds inadmissible, but allowed the appeal to proceed on two grounds: that they would be held in the ADX Florence ‘super-max’ prison and would face extremely long sentences — both of which they claimed would contravene Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which states that ‘No one shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.’
In its judgement today, the Court found that the conditions at the super-max prison would not be so bad as to constitute torture or degrading treatment, and that — as Isabel McArdle at the excellent UK Human Rights Blog puts it — ‘given the seriousness of the criminal allegations against the applicants in question, and the fact that aggravating and mitigating circumstances would be taken into account by the sentencing judge, the sentences would not be grossly disproportionate’.
This means that the five men will likely soon be deported. They do have three months to launch an appeal, but — as Joshua Rozenberg points out — the fact that the judges reached a unanimous decision without feeling the need for an oral hearing makes the chance that a request for appeal will be accepted slim.
And the wider implications of the ruling? McArdle calls it ‘a very important victory for the UK government, coming at a time of increased public unease about deportation and extradition law’. Perhaps it will also go some way towards correcting the caricature many have propagated in this country of the European Court of Human Rights as a court that always sides with terrorists against our government.
Comments