Extradition Delayed Is Justice Denied: Britain’s Home Office protects jihad’s “Captain Hook"

NRO ^ | 8/6/2008 | Andrew McCarthy

[mojito]

He arrived in Europe with great fanfare: an inspiring young leader from a foreign land who spoke with passion about change and social justice. And Europe answered the call, taking him to her bosom. He is, after all, every bit a “citizen of the world,” seizing on the bright promise of international tribunals to overcome the imperialist Anglo-American unilateralism of the past. And no one is more certain that dealing with terrorism through the maze of judicial processes is far preferable to George Bush’s cowboy-style militancy.

He’s not Barack Obama, though.

He is Mustafa Kamel Mustafa: Egyptian by birth, Briton by dubious marriage, and better known as Abu Hamza al-Masri. Shorn of an eye and armed with a curled prosthesis where his right hand once was — one of those unfortunate “mine-clearing accidents” in Afghanistan — he is the jihad’s very own “Captain Hook.”

He is the kind of terrorist who has customarily been killed, captured or otherwise neutralized on President Bush’s watch.

He is the kind of terrorist who would snicker and live to fight another day … and another … and another, if a President Obama were to make good on his promise to “restore America’s image in the world” — i.e., prostrate ourselves in the futile hope that the planet’s barbarians and parasites will like us better. Just look where that approach has gotten Great Britain....

[mojito]

The UK is the new France: an ally in name only.

I modified the title for space reasons.

[sinsofsolarempirefan]

Your moral outrage and sense of betrayal would be a lot more convincing if it were not for the fact that the US has shielded IRA terrorists for years, under the assumption that the our judicial system would be a mickey mouse court were a guilty verdict was a forgone conclusion....

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/events/northern_ireland/latest_news/190578.stm

[mojito]

The case you link to is from 1998, and the Court in question is the infamous 9th Circuit, or as we refer to it, the 9th Circus - the source of more bad law than any other Federal Circuit, and the one whose ruling are most often overturned by the US Supreme Court.

It was an absolutely outrageous decision, but typical of the 9th. In fact, the 9th is in many ways the US version of the European court that will protect Al-Masri - the kind of court that always sees criminals and terrorists as persecuted victims.

[wac3rd]

Correct.

But smoke a cigarette..throw away the key!

[dervish]

France is the one that created the name ‘Londonistan’ long before 9/11. France was angry that the Brits were giving refugee status to every tom dick and harry jihadi at the same time that the French were trying to keep them out of the continent.

French counterterrorism was tougher than the US pre 9/11. Even now the French have no problem deporting supected characters. PC human rights concerns be damned.

From a conservative org

http://www.jamestown.org/terrorism/news/article.php?articleid=2369780

Counterterrorism is not to be confused with the rioting by the French Muslims in recent years.

[Winniesboy]

What the froth in this article (and, if I may say so, your comment) ignore is that Hamza is in custody, will remain in custody, and will not go anywhere except to custody somewhere else, most probably the U.S. It also conveniently omits any scrutiny of the recently-renewed U.S/U.K. extradition treaty, which, by common consent of most legal observers, requires a far lower threshold of evidence for a westward than an eastward extradition: and in any case, the last I heard, still hadn’t been ratified by the U.S. although it’s already law in the U.K. I think you will find that in all cases where this treaty has been invoked, the U.K. could not have been more cooperative, most recently in the controversial case of the ‘NatWest Three’.

[mojito]

If what you say is true, then why did Home Secretary Jacqui Smith suspend the terms of the extradition treaty and turn jurisdiction in the matter over to the European Court of Human Rights?

These august persons in Strasbourg will now ponder at their considerable leisure whether Hamza’s “human rights” will suffer as a consequence of facing US justice.

[Winniesboy]

We shall see. The acid test will come, of course, when Hamza’s current sentence expires, before which time he would not have been extradited anyway: and it’s therefore premature to talk of treaty terms being ‘suspended’. I will be very surprised if Hamza isn’t on that flight pretty sharpish when the time comes. No British minister would want him to be on the loose again in this country.

[mojito]

Hamza’s UK sentence was going to be interrupted so he could stand trial in the US. He was as good as on the plane. In July, a UK judge ruled that he could not appeal his extradition to the House of Lords, and that the 2003 Extradition Treaty needed to be upheld.

At this point, Smith stepped in and delayed his extradition to allow Hamza’s lawyers to appeal to Strasbourg.

If this is not suspending the treaty, what is?

Also, what if the Euros find that poor Hamza will indeed have his “human rights” violated in the nasty, barbaric US? It means that the extradition treaty is a dead letter, because all UK suspects will have access to the Human Rights Court.

This is what loss of sovereignty means.

[Winniesboy]

Well, as I can only repeat - let’s see what actually happens.