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Billy's doings
THROW ABU QATADA OFF THE TRAIN? - some thoughts on the nature of human rights - 2012-04-20 18:12:10
The decade-long saga of the deportation of Abu Qatada looked like it might finally come to an end last week, until someone in the Ministry of Justice fumbled the ball and gave the radical Muslim cleric grounds to appeal his imminent removal from the UK. Predictably, the Sun newspaper reacted to this sudden reversal of fortune by demanding that Qatada be summarily put on a plane to Jordan so that we may finally be rid of this turbulent priest.
Other elements of the right-wing press have used the issue to pour scorn on the judges who are charged with enforcing human rights in the UK. The government, hoping to achieve something that eluded the previous Labour administration – the removal of Qatada – are caught between a media-fuelled populist outrage and the judge’s solemn adherence to the law.
Of course, governments must have a mechanism for removing foreign citizens who are deemed a threat to society, but we abandon the rules that govern human rights at our peril.
If a ticket inspector on an express train finds a passenger that does not have a ticket and refuses to buy one, under the rules that govern the railway, the inspector can demand that the passenger leave the train at the next stop. If the passenger refuses to get off when the train stops at the station, the inspector can call on a higher authority, such as the police, to remove the passenger.
What the ticket inspector cannot do is, having discovered the fare-dodger, immediately throw him off the moving express train. To do so would clearly endanger the life of the passenger and leave the train operator open to prosecution.
Neither can the inspector deal with the problem by stopping the train and putting the passenger off between stations. While it may not endanger the life of the passenger, it is clearly an irresponsible course of action that would again leave the train operators open to prosecution.
Though it may be frustrating to other fare-paying passengers that their fellow traveller is enjoying the comfort of the carriage free of charge – until the next scheduled stop, at least – the rules of the railway that protect him from being summarily thrown off the train also protect the train operator. Abandoning those rules simply to satisfy the anger of other passengers would ultimately undermine the quality of the service that they rely on.
