19/02/2009

Qatada Wins £2,500 Human Rights Compensation

Radical preacher Abu Qatada has been awarded £2,500 compensation by European judges for being detained after the September 11 attacks.

Judges at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg made the ruling that his detention without trial breached his human rights.

It comes just a day after the Law Lords ruled Qatada could be deported to Jordan - where he faces jail for terrorism - despite claims he may be tortured on return.

Ten others detainees under the same rules - none of whom were named by the court - also received similar cash awards.

Judges said the British government had breached several articles of the European Convention on Human Rights, including the rights to liberty and the right for lawfulness of detention.

The Judges said the compensation amounts were "substantially lower" than those granted in previous cases of "unlawful detention".

This was "in view of the fact that the detention scheme (the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001) was devised in the face of a public emergency, and as an attempt to reconcile the need to protect the UK public against terrorism with the obligation not to send the applicants back to countries where they faced a real risk of ill-treatment".

See: Abu Qatada Can Be Deported, Law Lords Rule

(JM)

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