Western Resistance

Islamic religous freedom:
No joy for Lina
http://www.malaysiakini.com/news/67914

Just to point out that the ECHR in Strasbourg has nothing to do with the EU. Although the EU is developing its own human rights legislation, the European Convention on Human Rights and the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg which adjudicates on matters relating to the treaty are totally separate entities to the European Union, based in Brussels.

In the UK, there is a growing awareness that it may have been a mistake to incorporate the principles of the ECHR into British law by the enactment of the Human Rights Act 1998, which not only requires judges to interpret British legislation in a way that is compatible with the Treaty and make a declaration of incompatibility if it does not (putting pressure on the goernment to amend the legislation so that it does), but also binds public bodies to act in a way that is compatible with the Convention rights.

This effectively makes it impossible to extradite jihadis to their countries of origin if those countries of origin do not have a good human rights record or if it is shown they face 'inhuman or degrading' treatment. This is the case even if the jihadi and his country's outllok largely correspond ie they believe in jihad and sharia law.

This in turn forces the British government to come up with devices like 'control orders', which has been described as a 'prison without bars' but are effectively a series of conditions/limitations placed on a suspect's liberty.

These have proved to be ineffective, and a significant number of people placed under control orders have absconded. They have also been criticised by civil liberties groups on the basis that they are punishment without trial, and only survive the provisions of the ECHR because they merely 'limit' the liberty of the individual rather than 'deprive' him of it.

It is clearly the human rights act which is preventing the government from dealing with these people in an efficient manner. The Human Rights Act should be repealed and the ECHR return to being merely a referral court. That is to say a set of ideals to be aspired to rather than rigidly adhered to.

After all, who of us gives a f*ck if a terrorist is sent to trial in Algeria, Egypt or Turkey or about what sort of punishment they are likely to receive? These people believe in sharia law and indiscriminate mass murder - let the cultures that produced them deal with them.

I am not sure if Italy has incorporated the terms of the ECHR into its law. I thought originally that only Britain had made this disastrous move, as you state above, of incorporating the ECHR into the 1998 Human Rights Act.

The Strasbourg court has made several rulings concerning member nations of the Council of Europe, including the issue of Turkey and the headscarf:

http://www.westernresistance.com/blog/archives/000875.html

The Strasbourg European Court of Human Rights is not technically part of the EU, and has no binding jurisdiction, but I believe many states (and wannabe states like Turkey) refer to it as a sign of being goof EU members.

In Italian law, international treaties approved by Parliament and President and published on the official Gazzetta Ufficiale have the force of law. The various European courts have jurisdiction in Italy because of such treaties.

The way I understand it, the fault in these two cases is probably with the proverbial slowness of the Italian courts, and with sloppy drafting in a new expulsion law. What seems to have happened is this: the courts' final sentence found that there was evidence that these two people had engaged in criminal activity, but that, due to slow legal process, the crimes they were charged with had fallen under prescription. So a double legal finding existed - guilty in fact, but innocent in law. Now, a recent expulsion law stated that in such cases, the state can expel foreign nationals. However, this law itself has never been applied yet, or never to any important case, and it is in order to test it that the European Court intervened - as is its legal right.

The thing that comes clearly out of this is that the Italian state authorities have certain evidence that these men are criminals; and that, even if they may have escaped jail (except for the long periods spent in remand, which probably amounted to several years), the police, judiciary, security services and government have them marked down as terrorists. I also suspect that the sentence means that, for instance, if a newspaper were to call them terrorists, they could not sue them for libel: for the facts are established.

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