Cleric is served with fresh deportation notice after UK and Jordan strike deal but is not expected to leave for months
A deal struck between Britain and Jordan will clear the way for the deportation of the radical Islamist cleric Abu Qatada, but the home secretary, Theresa May, has told MPs it will still be months before he is put on a plane.
Qatada, once described by a Spanish judge as Osama bin Laden's righthand man in Europe and whom the government has been trying to deport for more than 10 years, was back in a high security prison for the first time since February after being arrested at his north-west London home and served with a fresh deportation notice. He was then taken to the special immigration appeals commission (Siac) – Britain's anti-terrorist court – for a hurriedly convened bail hearing. Home Office lawyers successfully argued for his return to maximum security prison on the grounds that his deportation was now "imminent".
But the home secretary told MPs in the Commons that while she shared their frustration at the slow process, the new assurances from Jordan would enable him to be sent back without breaching the European convention on human rights. "Deportation might still take time – the proper processes must be followed and the rule of law must take precedence – but today Qatada has been arrested and the deportation process is under way," she said. She claimed the Jordanian assurances would enable Qatada, who was convicted in absentia of planning two bomb attacks on the basis of evidence obtained by torture, to get a fair trial on his return. Qatada's conviction would be quashed on his return and he would face a retrial.
However, Qatada's barrister, Edward Fitzgerald QC, said May's claims were nothing more than a "desperate attempt to claim that everything had changed" when the reality was that it amounted to "very little indeed". He warned that the new round of legal challenges threatened to be prolonged.
Although the deportation notice dates his intended removal "on or about 30 April", Qatada may challenge the fresh deportation notice "in Siac and beyond" – a process likely to take many more months and which will mean testing in the British courts May's claim that the Jordanian assurances overcome Strasbourg's human rights objections. The Siac judge, Mr Justice Mitting, indicated it might be October before the case is heard in full.
The deal includes elevating the existing Jordanian legal ban on using evidence obtained through torture to a constitutional right and a promise that a majority of the judges on the state security court trying his case would be civilians.
It also includes the highly unusual provision of pardoning and releasing two of Qatada's original co-defendants, who were convicted of taking part in the original bombing attacks. Their evidence was critical to Qatada's conviction in absentia but both made credible allegations that they had been tortured.
May told the Commons that their evidence had been at the heart of the European court ruling blocking his deportation and they would now be able to give evidence, "but what they say in court will have no effect upon the pardons they have already been granted. We can therefore have confidence they would give truthful testimony," said May, adding that this arrangement would mean Qatada could challenge their original statements.
The home secretary deflected backbench demands that she ignore Strasbourg and immediately put him on a plane.
"We simply cannot do this," she said. "As ministers, we would not just be breaking the law ourselves but we would be asking government lawyers, officials, the police, law enforcement officers and airline companies to break the law too."
She added that such a move would end with Qatada being returned to Britain and a compensation payout.
But Qatada's lawyers, arguing for his continued bail on a 22-hour curfew, claimed the Jordanian deal amounted to very little. Fitzgerald said the constitutional ban on using evidence obtained by torture in the Jordanian courts was little more than the "general verbiage to be found in any constitution or human rights instrument" and added little to the existing legal ban.
He said the statement that Qatada's original codefendants had been released and pardoned had been given no publicity in Jordan and was unfounded.
He also claimed the promise of a majority of civilian judges in the state security court was not matched by Jordanian law, which required a panel of three military judges.
But Mitting said that the assurances given showed that "the state of Jordan would bend over backwards to ensure he received a fair trial" and there was now a realistic prospect of bringing the affair to a close. He ordered that Qatada remain in maximum security prison pending his deportation and said he would only reconsider bail if there were further delays in the process.