Dani Garavelli: Why Abu Qatada must be free to go on the school run

ABU Qatada is a deeply unpleasant man. You wouldn’t want to bump into him on the school run. And you certainly wouldn’t want him living next door to you.

He came into the country on a forged passport and has preached extremism ever since. His views are an affront to a democratic society. Exactly what those views are, we have to take on trust as they have never been aired in open court. But we are told his written works are required reading for al-Qaeda terrorists across the globe and that nine audio-cassettes of his hate-filled sermons were found by Hamburg police in the apartment of Mohammed Atta, the lead hijacker in the 9/11 attacks.

In the time he has been in the UK, Qatada has cost the taxpayer millions of pounds. It would be good if we could be rid of him once and for all. But here’s the thing. Agreeing that Qatada is a thorn in our side makes it no easier to resolve the philosophical dilemma Islamic extremists like him pose. How should a democratic country treat men who are prepared to exploit the freedoms the UK offers them in order to undermine them? Should it jettison the principles that make that country civilised – such as a ban on torture and detention without trial? Or should it accept that laws are there for the nasty as well as the nice, and that bending them, even for someone as repellent as Qatada, strikes at the heart of the system? Qatada may be a blight on Britain, but he has been imprisoned for the best part of six years without charge. No matter how dangerous he appears to be, he is – like everyone in this country – innocent until proven guilty.

Of course, politicians say it’s not their fault he hasn’t been through the judicial system; the British government has spent those six years trying to have him deported to Jordan, where he has already been convicted in absentia of involvement in two terror plots. This extradition attempt has been backed by every court in Britain, but rejected by the European Court of Human Rights on the grounds that the Jordanians might use evidence extracted through torture to obtain a conviction.

Now, I understand why people hate the ECHR. Often its rulings seem to be less about protecting human rights and more about finding ingenious ways for miscreants to work the criminal justice system. Yet surely, in this case, it has a point. How can it be ethical to hand Qatada over to a country whose record on human rights is so chequered; a country which, according to Amnesty International, regularly uses tactics such as beatings, sleep deprivation, extended solitary confinement and physical suspension to extract confessions from terror suspects? So successful have the right been in their attempt to present the Islamic extremist as vindication of their Euroscepticism, key questions about the UK’s part in this debacle have been allowed to go unanswered. If Qatada’s preaching has been so vocal, if the evidence against him is so strong, why hasn’t he been charged in this country? There are a raft of laws under which he could be prosecuted – incitement to murder, for example, or incitement to racial hatred.

Challenged by Liberty’s director Shami Chakrabarti, former Home Secretary Alan Johnson said first that the then Labour government had focused on Qatada’s extradition; and then that it had been hindered by the law on intercept evidence (information obtained from emails or tapped phone conversations). And yet fellow extremist Abu Hamza was sentenced to seven years in a UK court at the end of a trial which took place while he was undergoing protracted extradition proceedings to the US. (The ECHR has blocked the move until it is sure he won’t be treated inhumanely.) Hamza was tried and convicted on 11 charges including six of soliciting murder and three of “using threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour with the intention of stirring up racial hatred” under the Public Order Act 1986.

Given what we know about Qatada’s activities it seems unlikely that evidence against him could not have been gathered and placed in front of a jury. The reason it has not, it has been suggested, is that a trial would be embarrassing for the security services, who, at the time he was allowed into Britain, dismissed claims that he was the “spiritual head of the mujahedin in Britain” as exaggeration. Then later, when it became clear he was dangerous, they first approached him to ask him to tone down his sermons and, when he refused, allowed him to escape their clutches. And that’s before we even get to the part where two British residents, one of whom had helped MI5 track Qatada down, were allegedly handed over to the CIA, leading to their rendition first to Bagram jail in Afghanistan and then to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

The UK government’s desire to see Qatada shipped off to Jordan is born, it seems, as much of our intelligences services’ misjudgments (and of their embarrassment at having used underhand tactics in their attempts to build a case) as a desire to see him face justice in his country of origin.

As it’s probably too late to charge him now, the best solution would be if David Cameron could extract a commitment from the King of Jordan that Qatada will face a fair trial if handed over. If he doesn’t, we will have to let him go free, while trying to find fresh evidence against him. Yes, the thought of him on the school run is repellent, as is the prospective cost of keeping an eye on him 24/7. But it is our adherence to certain unassailable principles that makes us who we are. Those principles can cost us dear. But if we believe – really believe – in democracy, sometimes we just have to suck it up.