ECHR ruling on Abu Qatada undermines national security, says think-tank

Islamist cleric and al-Qaeda associate Abu Qatada should be tried in Britain following the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruling that he cannot be deported to Jordan, the Henry Jackson Society argues today.

Qatada, a Jordanian national, stands accused of conspiracy to cause explosions in his home country, but has never been charged with any offences in the UK, despite a long record of terrorist activity.

The Henry Jackson Society notes that Qatada has served as the spiritual advisor to a host of radical Islamists including 9/11's '20th hijacker' Zacarias Moussaoui and the 2001 'shoe bomber' Richard Reid, and mentor of Abu Hamza, the former imam of the Finsbury Park Mosque who was convicted of soliciting to murder and inciting racial hatred in 2006.

Qatada has been linked to the terrorist group Egyptian Islamic Jihad (now merged with al-Qaeda) through Ayman al-Zawahiri and is believed to have known Osama bin Laden since 1989.

The ECHR judgment found the UK legal system did everything it could in processing Qatada and that the UK's extradition arrangements with Jordan were sound.

Qatada is not staying in the UK because he is at risk of torture, but because the evidence against him might have been obtained from others under duress, breaching article six of the ECHR, the right to a fair trial.

Before his arrest in London in October 2002, Abu Qatada was considered the most prominent jihadist scholar in the UK.

In February 2007, the Special Immigration Appeals Commission ruled that "He has given advice to many terrorist groups and individuals, whether formerly a spiritual adviser to them or not. His reach and the depth of his influence in that respect is formidable, even incalculable."

The 2008 report Virtual Caliphate, by the Centre for Social Cohesion, now part of the Henry Jackson Society, found many Islamist websites hosting audio recordings by Abu Qatada calling for jihad as the way to establish the Islamic caliphate, and demanding the execution of Muslim secularists, whom he describes as "kaffirs" (unbelievers).