Islamist Qatada given compensation

BBC says'Abu Qatada has been held in Belmarsh high security prison
Radical preacher Abu Qatada has been awarded £2,500 in compensation by the European Court of Human Rights.

Judges ruled that his detention without trial in the UK under anti-terrorism powers breached his human rights.

After his arrest last year, he was held under a 22-hour home curfew and later detained in Belmarsh prison.

On Wednesday, Law Lords in Britain ruled that Abu Qatada, 48, could be deported from the UK to Jordan despite fears he could be tortured there.

Lawyers for Abu Qatada have already submitted an application to appeal against his removal to the European Court.

Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling said the pay-out would "horrify most reasonable people in the UK".

The European Court also awarded pay-outs of between £1,500 and £3,400 to 10 other people who were detained in Britain following 9/11 on suspicion of providing support for extremists linked to al-Qaeda.

They include Abu Rideh, a Palestinian refugee who was detained in December 2001, accused of having links to radical preacher Abu Hamza, and Djamal Ajouaou, a Moroccan national, accused of being connected to two other terror suspects. My priority is the safety of this country and I want him removed as quickly as possible

Of the others, who cannot be named for legal reasons, six are Algerian, one Tunisian and one French.

They were held in prison without charge until 2005 and subsequently released under control orders. Several are understood to have since returned to their own countries.

Judges said the British government had breached three articles of the European Convention on Human Rights, including the right to liberty, the right for lawfulness of detention to be decided by a court and the right to compensation for unlawful detention.

But they rejected a fourth complaint, ruling that the detention of Abu Qatada did not amount to "torture and inhuman or degrading treatment".

Their decision is final and the government has no right to appeal.

The judges said the compensation amounts were "substantially lower" than those granted in previous cases of "unlawful detention".

They said this was "in view of the fact that the detention scheme (the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001) was devised in the face of a public emergency".

The Act was also designed "as an attempt to reconcile the need to protect the UK public against terrorism with the obligation not to send the applicants back to countries where they faced a real risk of ill-treatment," they said.

Where a person is arrested on the basis of "an allegedly reasonable suspicion of unlawful behaviour", they must have the opportunity to challenge those claims, they added.

Abu Qatada cannot be deported from Britain until the European Court has considered his appeal bid.

On Wednesday, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith called him "a truly dangerous individual".

"My priority is the safety of this country and I want him removed as quickly as possible," she said.

Abu Qatada was convicted in absentia in Jordan for involvement in an alleged conspiracy to bomb hotels in the capital Amman. He was also accused of providing finance and advice for other terror plots.

One judge has described him as Osama bin Laden's right-hand man in Europe.

Qatada was first detained in 2002, and was later released under a strict control order. He was returned to Belmarsh high security prison in November for breaching his bail conditions, where he remains pending deportation. '





The UK should be out of the EU and all European courts with HM sovereign again.