UK court turns down appeal to deport Qatada

The British home secretary suffered another blow on Wednesday after her appeal to deport radical cleric Abu Qatada back to Jordan was turned down by the high court.
The court rejected Secretary Theresa May’s attempt to overturn a ruling by the Special Immigrations Appeals Commission (SIAC), blocking Qatada’s return to Jordan to stand trial on the grounds that he faced a real risk of evidence obtained by torture being used against him.
The secretary’s appeal was rejected unanimously by three judges, including the head of high court civil justice, Lord Dyson. The judges said they recognised that Qatada was regarded by the UK government as a danger to national security and understood that there was a general feeling that his deportation to Jordan to face trial was long overdue.
“But the legal principles that Special Immigration Appeals Commission had to apply are clear and well established. The fact that he is considered to be dangerous is not relevant to the application of these principles any more than it would be relevant if the issue was whether he should be deported to a country where he would be at risk of facing torture himself,” said the appeal court ruling.
SIAC decided in November 2012 that Qatada could not be sent back to Jordan, where he was convicted of terror charges in his absence in 1999, without “a real risk” of evidence obtained through torture being used against him at a retrial.
Qatada was first arrested in October 2002 in south London and detained in Belmarsh, the UK’s high-security prison. He was re-arrested and released on bail number of times over the years that followed. In November 2012, he was released on bail from the prison when the courts blocked the home secretary’s latest attempt to deport him to Jordan.
Qatada was born in Bethlehem in 1960 and spent his early life in Jordan. He fled to Pakistan in 1989 eventually arrived in the UK in 1993. He was part of a group that sought refuge in the UK during the 1980s and 90s, often exiled from the Arab regimes where they fear prosecution and torture.