Abu Qatada deportation case: Endgame beings for arrested cleric

IT MAY take months before terror suspect Abu Qatada is deported to Jordan, Home Secretary Theresa May admitted yesterday.

Qatada was arrested yesterday in the final stages in a ten-year battlle to deport him.

Ms May has secured assurances from the Jordanians that they would “bend over backwards” to ensure he receives a fair trial, a senior immigration judge said.

The judge, Mr Justice Mitting, added: “If the parties act with great rapidity it is possible … this very long-running saga can be brought to a rapid conclusion within a matter of at most a very few weeks.”

But Qatada’s legal team are likely to challenge all moves to deport him and Mrs May warned MPs that it may still be “many months” before Qatada can be lawfully kicked out.

The radical cleric, described by a judge as Osama bin Laden’s right-hand man in Europe, was arrested at his London home by UK Border Agency officers yesterday. It marked the start of the coalition’s latest bid to deport Qatada, who was returned to jail after a rapidly convened court hearing found deportation was imminent and the chance of Qatada trying to abscond had increased. Any appeal would have to be based on “narrow grounds” Mrs May said, and the government was confident of “eventual success”.

Qatada was released from Long Lartin high-security jail in Worcestershire in February under some of the toughest bail conditions seen since the 11 September 2001 attacks on the US.

It came after Europe’s human rights judges in Strasbourg ruled that he could not be deported to Jordan without assurances that evidence gained through torture would not be used against him.But with the assurances now given by Jordan, the 51-year-old could be put on a plane lawfully, MPs were told. If he challenges the order and it is dismissed, a judicial review could be held as early as 25 April, the Special Immigration Appeals Commission hearing heard.

Speaking in the Commons, Mrs May said: “I believe the assurances and the information we have gathered will mean that we can soon put Qatada on a plane and get him out of our country for good.”

She pointed to a change in Jordan’s constitution last autumn “that includes a specific ban on the use of torture evidence”.

Other assurances include that Jordan’s state security court is not a quasi-military court as the judges in Strasbourg suggested, she said, but a key part of the Jordanian justice system. Qatada’s case “will be heard in public with civilian judges” and “his conviction in absentia will be quashed immediately” upon his return, she added. Mrs May also said Qatada would be held in a “normal civilian detention centre” with access to independent defence lawyers.

His co-accused will still be able to give evidence, but “what they say in court will have no effect upon the pardons they have been granted”, Mrs May said.

“We can therefore have confidence that they would give truthful testimony.”

Mrs May added: “Deportation may still take time. The proper process must be followed and the rule of law must take precedence.”