Home secretary expected to address national security concerns after ruling that radical Islamist cleric must be released
The home secretary is to face urgent questions in the Commons over a judge's decision to free on bail the radical Islamist cleric Abu Qatada.
It is expected the shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, will challenge Theresa May to both explain the national security implications of the ruling and urgently accelerate talks with the Jordanian authorities to clear the way for his deportation.
The Home Office has sharply criticised the decision by the special immigration appeals commission (Siac) – effectively Britain's anti-terror court – but May has not yet made a statement on the affair. She will make her statement in the Commons at around 3.30pm.
The attorney general, Dominic Grieve, has voiced his concern about the decision, but said courts could not allow people to be held in indefinite detention without trial.
The government was bound by the rule of law, its chief legal officer told the BBC after Siac ruled on Monday that Qatada should be freed on strict bail conditions after six and a half years' detention, despite the Home Office saying he continued to pose a risk to national security.
Mr Justice Mitting made the decision in the wake of a judgment at the European court of human rights last month that sending Qatada back to Jordan to a face a terrorist trial based on "torture-tainted evidence" would be a flagrant denial of justice.
Qatada is expected to be released from Long Lartin maximum security jail within days. Grieve told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "We obviously don't have indefinite internment without trial in this country. Individuals enjoy the right to liberty and government is bound by the rule of law and has to observe it.
"The government is obviously very concerned about this case and very much wishes to see Abu Qatada deported to Jordan and, when he is in Jordan, tried fairly if the Jordanian authorities wish to put him on trial.
"He cannot be deported unless the assurances which are required following the judgment in the European court of human rights can be secured."
Hazel Blears, the former counter-terrorism and security minister, said she wished the judge had said he would consider bail only if negotiations with Jordan over deportation were "fruitless". Qatada should be held for "as long as it takes" to put in a "satisfactory security regime", she told Today.
David Anderson, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, said Qatada's release on bail would provide an incentive for the government to finalise deportation to Jordan.
Siac has imposed some of the most draconian bail conditions seen since 9/11, including a 22-hour curfew, but this has done little to assuage the anger of Home Office ministers or politicians from all parties.
Qatada's lawyers had argued to the commission that a curfew of more than 12 hours would amount to "deprivation of liberty" under human rights legislation. Qatada had been detained under immigration laws pending his deportation.
A Home Office spokesperson said: "This is a dangerous man who we believe poses a real threat to our security and who has not changed in his views or attitude to the UK."
The government is considering an appeal against the European court's ruling and will continue to try to secure diplomatic assurances from Jordan that Qatada will not face a trial based on torture-tainted evidence.
The former Labour home secretary David Blunkett said: "It is an unholy mess. We are left in the absurd position of not being able to remove a man even though everyone accepts he won't be tortured, not being able to keep him in prison because his human rights trump the protection of the British people, and a government that has watered down control orders so that they are more lax than was previously the case."
The Conservative backbencher Dominic Raab echoed Blunkett's anger: "It makes a mockery of human rights law that a terrorist suspect deemed 'dangerous' by our courts can't be returned home, not for fear that he might be tortured, but because European judges don't trust the Jordanian justice system."
The 22-hour curfew is stricter than the "overnight residence requirement" specified in the coalition's replacement for control orders. The other bail conditions include an electronic tag, MI5 vetting of all his visitors except for immediate family, and monitoring of his communications. The delay in his release is to allow the security services to check the proposed bail address and organise their surveillance operation.
In his ruling, Mr Justice Mitting said that although the six and half years Qatada had been detained under immigration powers was "unusually long", he agreed with the home secretary that it was also lawfully justified. However, he said: "The time will arrive quite soon when continuing detention or deprivation of liberty could not be justified."
The Siac judge warned May that Qatada's "highly prescriptive" bail terms would be relaxed after three months if there was no demonstrable progress made with the Jordanians.
The bail conditions mirror those set in 2008 when Qatada was released for six months before being returned to prison on unspecified national security grounds. The judge said the risks to national security and of absconding in the case had not significantly changed since then.
Cooper said May had to explain what action she was taking on the national security implications of the ruling. "Abu Qatada should face terror charges in Jordan, and the home secretary needs to urgently accelerate discussions with the Jordanian government to make that possible," she said.
Qatada, whose real name is Omar Othman, 51, featured in hate sermons found on videos in the flat of one of the 9/11 bombers. Since his original detention in October 2002, every attempt to deport him to Jordan has been frustrated. The law lords ruled three years ago that he could be sent back but the Strasbourg decision overturned that ruling.