Abu Hamza deportation: Human rights court accused of double-standards for failing to tackle 'appalling' European prisons

Human rights judges will rule today on whether to allow the Government to extradite radical preacher Abu Hamza and five others to America to face terrorist charges.

Dominic Raab, MP for Esher and Walton and a former Foreign Office lawyer, said it would be "grossly hypocritical" for the court to block the men's extradition because it had failed to tackle standards in eastern and central European prisons. He said the court had failed to intervene in the cases of British citizens held in "appalling" European prisons.

"If you think of cases like Andrew Symeou, held on remand in an appalling Greek prison, or Michael Turner in a prison in Hungary formerly run by the KGB what you have is European human rights eye turning a blind eye because of the assumption that all European standards of justice are high. That's a con. Strasbourg is all too willing to pick holes in justice systems in other parts of the world."

Mr Symeou spent a year in the notorious Korydallos prison, Athens, after being accused of manslaughter a British student in a nightclub.

Mr Turner, the son of a Dorset pub landlord, was held for four months without charge in a "terrifying" Hungarian prison after being accused of fraud after his time-share marketing firm collapsed, alleging owing thousands to Hungarian debtors.

Hamza, serving a seven-year sentence in Britain for soliciting to murder and inciting racial hatred, has become the focus of growing concern over human rights rulings from Strasbourg which ministers claim could compromise national security.

The European Court of Human Rights halted extradition proceedings in July 2010, arguing it needed more time to consider complaints that transferring Abu Hamza and others wanted in the US risked breaching their rights by exposing them to possible life imprisonment without parole and solitary confinement.

The judges will give a final ruling on six extradition cases in a verdict effectively passing judgment on whether America's treatment of terrorist suspects could amount to "inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment" in breach of the European human rights code. Egyptian-born Abu Hamza was granted British citizenship in 1986. He is wanted in America on 11 charges related to taking 16 hostages in Yemen in 1998, promoting violent jihad in Afghanistan in 2001 and conspiring to set up a jihad training camp in Oregon, America.

The American authorities have described him as a "terrorist facilitator with a global reach".

Mr Raab contrasted the potential fate of the six accused to that of Richard O'Dwyer, the British 23-year old facing extradition for copyright infringment.

"If that is upheld, that they can't be extradited because they might face life imprisonment in a super-max prison in Colorado, we've got rather a perverse situation.

"On the one hand, our blunt extradition orders don't protect the innocent from being extradited in the first place; you think about people like Richard O'Dwyer.

"On the other hand, you have European human rights law protecting serious terrorist players like Abu Hamza on the basis that even of convicted fairly, they would face life imprisonment under pretty tough conditions. To my mind that is the worst of all worlds. "They'd effectively be ruling out terrorist extradition to the US frankly because of conditions which most people in this country would say three cheers to. It's not on the basis that they would not have a fair trial, but because it would be tantermount to torture or inhumane and degrading treatment to face life in prison without parole in super-max facilities. I find it extraordinary."

Among those facing extradition alongside Hamza is Babar Ahmad, a 36-year-old computer expert who has been in a UK prison without trial for nearly eight years. He has been refused bail since his arrest in August 2004 on a US extradition warrant.

Both appealed separately to the European Court of Human Rights on the grounds that their treatment and potential punishment could violate Human Rights Convention Article 3 banning torture and "inhuman or degrading treatment".

The fate of four other British nationals wanted in the US - Haroon Rashid Aswat, Seyla Talha Ahsan, Adel Abdul Bary and Khaled Al-Fawwaz - is also being decided by the human rights court.

All six have been indicted on various charges of alleged terrorism in America and argue that, if extradited and convicted in America, their conditions of detention if held at one of the country's so-called "supermax" prisons would amount to ill-treatment under Article 3 of the Human Rights code.

In July 2010 the human rights judges said they needed more time to consider whether the Eighth Amendment to the US Constitution - a ban on "cruel and unusual punishment" - gives the equivalent protection to Article 3 of the European code which states: "No-one shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment".

Babar Ahmad and Ahsan are accused in America of providing support to terrorists and conspiracy to kill, maim or injure people and damage property in a foreign country. Aswat is accused of conspiring with Abu Hamza to establish a jihad training camp in Oregon.

One issue the Strasbourg court has been considering is whether the American principle of life imprisonment without parole breaches the European human rights code.

In January the same court refused to allow the UK to deport Abu Qatada to Jordan, where he is wanted on terrorist charges, without assurances that evidence gained through torture would not be used against him at his trial.

The result caused Government fury, and has still not been resolved: last month Home Secretary Theresa May went to Jordan, returning after "positive" talks, but with no firm assurances to take back to the human rights court.


(2012-04-10/telegraph)