Monday, January 27, 2014

Rights and wrongs

I have often railed against human rights abuses when known criminals have used various clauses to remain in the UK, the most common being the right to a family life, which has even been used by a serial child abuser to remain, such are the soft touches that make up our senior judges today. I'm also aware that there are some out there who have committed no crimes yet are watched as the security forces know that they are a risk to the general public.
Mail.
An Al Qaeda-trained bomb-maker was last night free to walk Britain’s streets under a cloak of state-sanctioned anonymity.
The fanatic is one of seven men released from Government anti-terror control orders this month under rules meant to protect their human rights.
He undertook terror training in Pakistan and was named as an alleged terrorist by an American supergrass whose evidence helped to foil a massive UK bomb plot. The 41-year-old was part of a London group of Islamist extremists that included one of those who plotted to blow up the Ministry of Sound nightclub and Bluewater shopping centre in 2004.
Am I happy about this guy walking amongst us? No, I would have thought such a creature would have been banned from living here, however I'm not the one who makes up the rules.
That said, he does have a right to anonymity, if only because he hasn't actually committed a crime here and much as I'm loath to admit it in his case, it's a right I believe any decent society ought to have.
If however he does go on to commit some form of atrocity here, I will be amongst the first to be wondering why he was allowed to wander around unmonitored. But so far other than allegations, he hasn't been convicted of anything.
This probably need regulations for monitoring suspects with far more teeth than the T-PIMS but that is by the bye, until convicted or arrested then these people have a right to be give enough rope to hang themselves in anonymity.
After all, if it works to protect them, it works to protect us...

1 annotations:

Longrider said...

This was what the detention without trial was all about under labour. If someone is guilty of a crime, assemble the evidence and put them on trial. If not, then, well, too bad.

One of the issues was that the evidence wasn't admissible - telephone intercepts for example. Okay, fine, change the rules to make it admissible - don't hold people without trial on the basis of an accusation, because their freedoms are our freedoms and I wouldn't want to be held by the state on the basis of an accusation without any means of defending myself.

The solution is there and it is relatively simple. Simple, that is to reasonable people with a modicum of intellect - so that rules out politicians...