We’re trapped in a game of Snog Marry Avoid about Abu Qatada

In the BBC Three show, Snog, Marry, Avoid? contestants are given the aforementioned trio of options when selecting a putative love interest. It’s a fair bet SMA is not routine viewing in the homes of Al Queda supporters, but there is now an Abu Qatada version: Free. Jail. Deport.

So what do we do with him? Well the government made that decision last night when they released him from Long Lartin maximum security prison under a draconian curfew in order to comply with the recent European Court of Human Rights ruling.

The upside here (and there is one) of upholding due process – even when it is difficult and unpopular – is that we walk the talk on liberty and human rights. It is a victory for Western civilisation and one in the eye for the crackpots ad hate mongers of jihadist Islam. The cartoonish, claptrap spewed forth by 10th century bigots like Qatada is bleached out by our centuries of evolving legal tradition that even provides rights for enemies of our country like him.

Ah, but wait a minute. It’s all very well talking about his rights, but Abu Qatada is an Al Queda pin-up whose very presence in this country threatens the liberties and lives of millions of people. What about their rights? My rights?
Copies of his foam-flecked ‘sermons’ were found in the Berlin flat where 9/11 terrorists lived. Shoe-bomber Richard Reid was a personal devotee. We may lack evidence that he was actively involved in terrorist plots himself, but he is a preacher of hate who eggs on the nutters. What the hell is he doing walking our streets?

So here comes the third option. If we can’t convict him in open court here, then why not pack him off to his country of origin, Jordan, where they want to try him for terrorist offences.
Ah, but Jordan has a dodgy human rights record and we can’t guarantee what will happen to him if we send him to the tender embrace of the Jordanian secret police. And they will certainly use evidence against him that was obtained through torture, compromising Britain’s integrity and our various treaty obligations.

Ah, but we signed a memorandum of understanding with the Jordanian government guaranteeing that he won’t be mistreated.

Ah, but will they honour it?

Ah, but do we really care?

And so we go round in circles. The political liberal in me upholds that it may be messy and a legal and policing nightmare to deal with, but adhering to our laws in the Qatada case can be powerfully resonant. We can show we are willing to provide basic justice even for those who would deny it to others.

Yet the realist in me tells me there is no means of preventing his involvement in harming this country again. So, if we can, why not rid ourselves of this turbulent cleric, once and for all? (Not slay him in the Thomas a Beckett sense you understand, merely pile him into an economy seat on Jordanian Airlines).

So, again, what to do? Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has pointed out that the government has been caught napping by the European Court of Human Rights ruling. We should have been straight in there with an appeal and should have been banging on the Jordanian government’s door toot sweet in order to find a way of beefing-up guarantees about his fair treatment.

The damage this case is doing to public trust in our legal process and system of government can only be guessed at. And it comes to something when a home secretary is effectively neutered from dealing with a threat to public safety.

The question remains though, if he is so dangerous why can’t we level charges against him in a court of law? I have to say, he doesn’t much look like a criminal mastermind. He’s invariably described as a “radical cleric”. But that catch-all phrase could just as easily be applied to Trevor Huddlestone. And if we could jail Al Capone for tax evasion, why can’t our best policing and legal brains find something that will stick on Abu Qatada?

What we have right now is a very British fudge. Qatada is locked in an ante-chamber between liberty and incarceration. Between guilt and innocence. He cannot use a mobile phone or the internet. He cannot go even go into his own garden.

And in a ruling straight out of Yes Minister he cannot speak with 27 named individuals, including the current Al Queda leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri. Well who would have expected that?
No side is happy; everyone loses. Liberty looks shabby; security looks weak. Rather than simply showing him the door, we are trying to urge our unwanted dinner guest to leave by serving him cold soup and switching off the dining room lights.

So the choices we appear to have are to be principled but unpopular and lose public trust; or to be assertive, but perhaps unprincipled and possibly illegal.

Personally I’m with Abu Qatada’s mother Aisha Othman. She says he would be better off returning to Jordan to face trial.

Surely anything’s better than sitting in a house for 22 hours a day watching Jeremy Kyle and Loose Women?