And so, once again, the judges are in the dock for insisting that due process be followed even when, as in the case of Abu Qatada, it is inconvenient to do so. On the face of it, the decision to thwart Qatada’s deportation to Jordan seems unreasonable. But the truth is that few of us are in any position to judge the worth of the Jordanian government’s assurances that none of the evidence used against Qatada will have been tainted by torture. It may be that, as the ECHR ruled, those assurances are credible (and if so, that’s in part thanks to the work of bodies such as the ECHR) or it may be that, as the Special Immigration Appeals Commission has determined, they are not.
The bigger problem, really, is one I wrote about in February:
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