TerrorismJihadi cleric Abu Qatada deported from U.K. to stand trial in Jordan

After protracted legal battles, Abu Qatada has been deported to Jordan // Source: alhurra.com

After eight years of protracted and costly legal battles, Jihadi cleric Abu Qatada was deported from the United Kingdom to Jordan. Sunday morning he was flown on private chartered jet, accompanied by four British police officers, who handed him over to their Jordanian counterparts. Abu Qatada, who was described as Osama bin Laden’s right-hand man in Europe, was taken in a 12-car convoy, manned by masked anti-terrorism police, to the Muwaqqar military prison on the outskirts of Amman.

A Jordanian military prosecutor said the cleric had been charged with conspiring to carry out al -Qaeda-linked attacks in Jordan. He will be kept in detention for fifteen days for questioning.

The Guardian reports that the charges against the preacher date back to alleged offences in the 1990s.

Theresa May, the home secretary, expressed her satisfaction at his removal from the United Kingdom, issuing a statement almost as soon as the jet’s wheels were up.

“I am glad that this government’s determination to see him on a plane has been vindicated and that we have at last achieved what previous governments, parliament and the British public have long called for,” she said. “This dangerous man has now been removed from our shores to face the courts in his own country.”

May said that Abu Qatada’s deportation to his native Jordan has cost the U.K. government a total o £1.7 million, of which£647,658 went to pay for the public defenders of the cleric.

Prime Minister David Cameron said he was delighted that Abu Qatada had finally been removed, saying the radical preacher’s continued presence in the UK had made his “blood boil.”

Cameron said: “This [Abu Qatada’s removal] is something this government said it would get done and we have got it done, and it is an issue that like the rest of the country has made my blood boil that this man who has no right to be in our country, who is a threat to our country and that it took so long and was so difficult to deport him, but we have done it, he is back in Jordan, and that is excellent news.”

The Guardian notes that Abu Qatada was not as fiery a spokesman for militant Islam as other notorious Jihadi London clerics – for example, the hook-handed Abu Hamza or former al-Muhajiroun leader Omar Bakri – and that, in any event, his reach was more limited because he preferred to speak in his native Arabic rather than in English. Still, the U.K. security services considered him to be a much bigger threat because he enjoyed a much higher theological standing within terrorist groups.

The key argument his lawyers made during the 8-year legal battle against his deportation was that he would be subjected to torture if were in the hands of the Jordanian security services.

To overcome this obstacle, the U.K. government drew up a 24-page mutual legal assistance treaty between the United Kingdom and Jordan. One of the passages in the treaty states that when there are “serious and credible allegations that a statement from a person has been obtained by torture” they would not be used in a court.

May said Abu Qatada’s departure “marks the conclusion of efforts to remove him since 2001 and I believe this will be welcomed by the British public.

“I am glad that this government’s determination to see him on a plane has been vindicated and that we have at last achieved what previous governments, parliament and the British public have long called for.”

Both May and Cameron pointedly said that the case would lead to a change in the U.K.’s relationship with the European court of human rights (ECHR). The ECHR had upheld arguments against extradition advanced by the cleric which cited human rights laws.

“I am also clear that we need to make sense of our human rights laws and remove the many layers of appeals available to foreign nationals we want to deport,” said May. “We are taking steps — including through the new immigration bill — to put this right.”

Asked about whether the United Kingdom should withdraw from the ECHR, Cameron said: “Frankly when it comes to these cases I don’t rule anything out in terms of getting this better for the future.”