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Theresa May was right to reject the calls of rightwing boneheads to simply put Qatada on a plane
Justice delayed is justice denied. But justice rushed can be justice discredited too. That is the danger that again threatens the Home Office's efforts, justifiable in principle, to deport the jihadist cleric Abu Qatada from the UK. Tuesday's government moves had all the feeling of a hasty job in which the political and the legal parts of the case were struggling to stay on the same page. As Theresa May tried to persuade MPs and the rightwing press that Qatada would be gone within days, it was quickly apparent that the process might in fact take many months. Politics may require the quick fix, but justice equally reasonably requires a proper process.
The government has done the right thing in attempting to secure more detailed assurances that Qatada's deportation to Jordan would satisfy the conditions which the European court of human rights properly insisted on when it ruled against the UK. That is the right thing because it is what the courts have told the government to do – and the most important single thing that Mrs May said was that, of all people and institutions, the government must obey the law. Mrs May was right to reject the calls of rightwing boneheads to simply put Qatada on a plane. That would have been an appalling breach of law and responsibility – and it would not have worked anyway.
The nub of the issue now is whether those new assurances reach a proper legal safeguard threshold. Mrs May's statement offered only generalities on this – with assertions that Jordan's state security court was a civilian not a quasi-military court, that Qatada's trial would be held in public before civilian judges with fundamental rights for the defendant, and that Jordan's constitution now includes an explicit ban on the use of torture evidence. However, in the absence of much greater detail – some of which was being put before the special immigration court – no third party can yet say whether these assurances are adequate or not. The case is certainly not proven. Amnesty International is explicit that trials in security cases before the Jordanian special court contravene basic rules of natural justice. The UK court will have to test the government's new claims before Mrs May's version can be accepted.
Coincidentally or not, Mrs May's announcement came on the eve of this week's important Council of Europe conference in Brighton on the future of the European court. Her immediate concern was to persuade MPs that Britain had a grip on the Qatada case. But if a secondary imperative was to impress the Council of Europe that Britain remains committed to the rule of law in human rights cases, this was a timely way of showing it. Ministers may be grumpy about the long-running Qatada case, but they have done the right thing so far.
