Scum-watch: Europe and Hamza, sitting in a tree..
There's nothing the Sun loves better (other than big tits, Our Boys, attractive missing little girls and Sky, naturally) than attacking Europe, both as a whole and as in the political union. Add in one of the Sun's other favourite pantomime villains, the almost too good to be true Abu Hamza, and you have the latest outrage about which something must be done:Euro clowns let Hamza off the hook
EUROPEAN judges yesterday halted Abu Hamza’s extradition to the US on terror charges after the cleric claimed it would breach his human rights.
If this is meant to give the impression that the European judges have ruled that he can't be extradited, then the Sun's job has been done. It's only four paragraphs later that the Sun explains further:
They ruled the extradition be put on hold until they are able to consider the case.
In other words, all the court has decided is that there's potentially a case to answer and that Hamza should not be deported until the court considers its decision. The European Court of Human Rights is the last court which Hamza has recourse to appeal to, having decided not to apply to the House of Lords after the High Court ruled his extradition should go ahead.
Quite why the Sun is getting so excited about this is a mystery. Hamza isn't going anywhere, as he's still serving his sentence for stirring up racial hatred and inciting murder at Belmarsh, and is unlikely to be released even if he completes it before the ECHR makes its ruling. It feebly attempts to suggest that this will be another £50,000 of "benefits" going to Hamza, but this is legal aid which he'll never so much as touch. The chances of him succeeding are also negligible: he doesn't face the death penalty, so the precedent set by Soering v. the United Kingdom doesn't apply, and he hasn't in his appeal to the ECHR claimed that the evidence against him is the product of torture, as he had previously done.. Just as pathetic is its final remarks that the judges are from countries unlikely to be "targets in the war on terror":
They are Giovanni Bonnell, 72, from Malta, David Björgvinsson, 52, of Iceland, Paivi Hirvelä, 53, of Finland, Nebojsa Vucinic, 55, of Montenegro, Mihai Poalelungi, 45, of Moldavia (sic), Jan Šikuta, 47, of Slovakia, Ljiljana Mijovic, 44, of Bosnia Herzegovina, Ledi Bianku, 37, of Albania and Lech Garlicki, 61, of Poland.
This is ignorant in two ways. Firstly because these are the judges of just one of the sections, section IV, which just happened to be the ones chosen in this case to rule on Hamza's request. The president of the court, for instance, is French, a nation which has dealt with Islamic terrorism for far longer than we have, while one of the vice-presidents is a Brit. Additionally, one of the section presidents is Danish, another country which has found itself in the eye of the storm recently. Additionally, while the majority of those countries may not have suffered or been targeted in the "war on terror" (yet), Bosnia was certainly one of the places of interest to al-Qaida in the 90s, and Poland has deployed troops in Iraq, most certainly making them a potential target.
It's the Scum's leader that as usual lets loose with the both barrels:
YOU won’t have ever heard of 72-year-old Giovanni Bonnell from Malta. Or Ledi Bianku, 37, from Albania.
But yesterday these two — plus seven other judges on the European Court of Human Rights — STOPPED the extradition of hate preacher Abu Hamza to the US.
They haven't stopped it - they've ruled that it should it be postponed while they consider the matter. There's quite a big difference between saying they can't extradite Hamza and saying that they shouldn't whilst they consider the case.
Their intervention is an outrage.
British courts ruled Hamza must face justice in America.
That decision has now been put on hold so Euro judges can hear the twisted fanatic’s appeal.
Bonnell, Bianku and their chums all come from obscure countries that have never faced Islamic terrorism.
This is just the latest example of how Europe rides roughshod over the UK. It’s time we stood up and said enough and no more.
Hamza’s fate is a decision for British judges — and British judges alone.
Time for a history lesson. The Sun loves to pretend that it's Europe that's always imposing itself on Britain - when in this case it was Britain that had a major rule in the setting up of first the Convention on Human Rights and then the court itself. Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe oversaw the drafting of the document, which was ratified in 1953. The Court itself was first established in 1959, and as one of the founding members of the Council of Europe (a completely separate entity to the European Economic Committee which became the European Union), which oversees the court and the convention, we have been party to it since the beginning. The Sun is therefore claiming that Europe has been riding roughshod over us since the early 50s, or rather, that we've been more or less riding roughshod over ourselves.
The Sun of course never corrects the completely faulty impression that this is something to do with European Union, and has indeed in the past wrongly claimed that it is part of the European Union. Hence the commentators screaming for us to get out of Europe now. Even if we were to leave the European Union, it seems doubtful that we would also exit the Council of Europe, and besides, the European Convention of Human Rights is already now British law as the Human Rights Act. Hamza's appeal to the ECHR is simply his final throw of the dice and one which shouldn't be use to attack Europe in such a disengenuous manner.
Labels: Abu Hamza, bullshit, ECHR, European Court of Human Rights, human rights act, Scum-watch, Sun-watch
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