The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has decided to halt the deportation of asylum seekers. Rwanda It is entirely predictable but what is surprising is the speed with which it has come to its decision.
as work and pension secretary Therese Coffey said on Radio 4’s Today program yesterday: ‘I’ve never known of such a quick decision made by anyone at ECHR.’
The Strasbourg-based court, which has nothing to do with the European Union but was established in 1959 in hopes of preventing another Nazi-type regime from riding on human rights, has a well-earned reputation for slowness .
At the end of 2018 (before the impact of any pandemic) there were about 10,000 cases awaiting preliminary judicial examination. Of those, 1,500 waited for more than a decade—about 12 years as long as the Nazis were in power.
Yet, somehow, out of the blue, the ECHR managed to find the energy to spring into action and thwarted the UK government’s effort to crack down on people trafficking by employing an offshore processing facility in Rwanda.
The decision has – again – raised the hackles of lawmakers, who view the ECHR as an overly political body that uses a loose interpretation of human rights to interfere with decisions in a country’s democratically elected parliament. area should be
Surprisingly, most of the criticism of the ECHR on the Rwanda issue has come from Conservative MPs. But you don’t have to be a conservative minister to fail in the ECHR’s attempt to poke your nose at domestic politics.
Labor Home Secretary John Reid and Jackie Smith also suffered as a result of the ECHR’s decisions.
Even Tony Blair, who oversaw the passage of the Human Rights Act – incorporating the European Convention on Human Rights into domestic law – later became furious when the ECHR criticized its handling of Islamic terrorism in the wake of 9/11. His efforts began to fail.
Ironically, the ECHR consists of judges appointed by several countries who lower themselves on their human rights record, including Russia, Azerbaijan, Serbia and Albania.
Will the Rwandan regime push the government to do what it has threatened to do for more than a decade and move away from the ECHR and the European Convention, instead drafting a British Bill of Rights?
Don’t bet on it. Every time the idea has been proposed, the hand of the establishment seems to have been felt on the shoulders of the ministers.
Abu Qatada successfully sought asylum in the UK in 1993, soon gaining a reputation as a hate campaigner. In 1999, he was indicted on charges of conspiracy to explode in Jordan, but attempts to deport him were thwarted even after approval by the House of Lords.
In 1980, John Hurst murdered his landlady and was given a 25-year sentence for the murder. He later complained of not being able to vote, and the ECHR agreed that no prisoner should be denied a vote.
Boris Johnson has an intimate relationship with the court. His grandfather, Sir James Fawcett, was the President of the European Commission on Human Rights between 1972 and 1981. It was this body that, until 1998, where citizens were empowered to present cases directly to the ECHR, decided what should and should happen. be placed before the court. Three years ago, former Supreme Court Justice Jonathan Sumption used the BBC’s Reith lecture to argue that its judges had gone too far and engaged in what amount of power grabs from elected politicians.
The result is that many of the 315 decisions the ECHR has ruled against the UK since 1975 are distorted at best – as this analysis shows.
2004 – A murderer got the right to vote
In 1980, John Hurst murdered his landlady and was given a 25-year sentence for the murder. He was annoyed to learn that as a prisoner, he was not allowed to vote.
In 2004, the ECHR ruled that Britain was wrong to refuse the vote to all prisoners. The then Labor government appealed against the decision and was defeated.
Thankfully, in this case at least neither the Labor government nor anyone since has followed up on this distorted decision.
2009 – Verdict against the deportation of a Nigerian criminal
How bad is it to convince the ECHR that you deserve to be deported from your adoptive home? Obviously, worse than Steven Omojudi, who was jailed for five years in 1989 for theft and conspiracy.
Despite this, the Home Office gave him a second chance and granted him leave to live from 2005. The following year he was imprisoned for sexual assault.
In 2007, the then Home Secretary John Reid ordered his deportation to Nigeria. The ECHR ruled that his deportation interfered with his right to family life – and awarded him €9,000 in damages.
2009 – Abu Qatada and ten others receive compensation for the loss of freedom
The ECHR ruled that the detention of 11 people arrested on suspicion of terroristic offenses under the Anti-Terrorism Offenses and Security Act 2001 was illegal as it violated their right to liberty.
He was awarded a total of £26,000, with radical cleric Abu Qatada receiving £2,500. Exactly what Britain had to do with terrorist suspects after 9/11, the court did not say.
Police stop and search suspected protesters at the Royal Exchange and the Bank of England
2010 – ECHR rules against police stop-and-search powers
The names Kevin Gillan and Penny Quinton aren’t quite that different in the annals of historical injustice. The couple were detained for less than half an hour while police stopped and searched them outside the Defense Systems and Equipment Exhibition at the Excel Center in London’s Docklands in 2003.
You might imagine that the police were taking appropriate action, searching people in the wake of 9/11 they thought were acting suspiciously outside a defense exhibition. But the couple was so distraught that they took their case to Strasbourg – and won.
The court awarded £30,000 for their costs.
2011 – Somali criminals allowed to stay in the UK
Abdismad Ado Sufi and Abdiaziz Ibrahman Elmi were convicted in Britain of burglary, death threats, robbery and Class A drug dealing.
But when it came to deporting him at the end of his sentence, the ECHR ruled that it could not proceed as he could face death or injury as Somalia was in a state of civil war – and it was subject to EU Articles. 3 would be violated. Convention on Human Rights.
2012 – ECHR bans Abu Qatada from being deported to his native Jordan
Abu Qatada successfully sought asylum in the UK in 1993, soon gaining a reputation as a hate campaigner. In 1999, he was convicted of conspiracy to explode in Jordan, but attempts to deport him were thwarted even after approval by the House of Lords.
The ECHR ruled that Qatada could not be deported to Jordan because it said that he could be prosecuted on the evidence obtained from the torture. He was eventually deported the following year and cleared of terrorist charges.
Sylvie Beagle was questioned by police upon arrival at East Midlands Airport in 2011. The authorities exercised powers vested in the Terrorism Act, but the ECHR ruled that the right to privacy had been violated.
2016 – Terrorist suspect pays police compensation using ‘wrong procedure’
Three would-be underground bombers whose bombs failed to detonate weeks after the deadly 7/7 bombings in July 2005 took the UK government to court, claiming their punishment was unfair because they had not been given legal advice early.
Thankfully their cases failed, but the ECHR ruled that the fourth person who had helped one of the attackers and hid information from the police should be offered a lawyer when he began to plead guilty. . Result? He was awarded €16,000 in compensation.
2019 – Police Wrong to question airline passenger
Sylvie Beagle was questioned by police upon arrival at East Midlands Airport in 2011. The officers used powers enshrined in the Terrorism Act, which allows the interrogation of members of the public even if they have no evidence of wrongdoing.
Beghal refused to answer questions and later pleaded guilty to failing to cooperate with the police. He then challenged the police powers under the Terrorism Act to the Supreme Court, which had not abused his human rights.
However, the ECHR decided that his right to privacy had been violated – all because he was asked some questions at an airport.