Letters: Protecting the UK

The decision of the Special Immigration Appeals Commission to allow Abu Hamza to retain British citizenship demonstrates that the European Convention on Human Rights is not the only pernicious international convention to which we are subject. It is no doubt the 1961 United Nations Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness which is the cause of this appalling decision.

By The Newsroom

Published 7th Nov 2010, 14:09 BST

Updated 7th Nov 2010, 20:59 BST

It offends against justice and commonsense that a foreign-born man jailed for inciting murder and racial hatred here, wanted in the United States for serious offences and intensely hostile to every aspect of our history, culture and society should, nonetheless, be entitled to retain British citizenship.

Every time such a hostile Islamist is rewarded by our government or courts with refugee status, citizenship or benefits, it poisons the well for those who genuinely need and deserve our protection.

We should withdraw from these treaties. We are quite capable of granting succour to those who deserve it without such international obligations. Indeed, Britain was accepting refugees (Karl Marx included) long before the United Nations was conceived.

OTTO INGLIS

Inveralmond Grove

Cramond, Edinburgh

The radical cleric Abu Hamza declares himself to be an enemy of the state, and is rewarded by being allowed to remain a British citizen. In the same week, the European Union compels our coalition government to give prisoners the vote, a decision welcomed by one half of the coalition, but not by the other.

And not for the first time, the average man in the street has cause to ask himself: 'Whose interests is this government actually representing?'

MALCOLM PARKIN

Gamekeepers Road

Kinnesswood, Kinross