Douglas Murray is almost certainly right in suggesting that the British government should seek to prosecute Abu Qatada. However, more fundamentally the government's problems in deporting Abu Qatada and other Islamist terrorists to their countries of origin stem from this government's own adoption of the European concept of human rights, in preference to our historic British one.
The European concept of human rights is exemplified in the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and was incorporated into the 1997 Human Rights Act, which formed a centre piece of Labour's 1997 election manifesto. This gives innate rights such as 'liberty' to all individuals. In contrast to this, the Anglo American concept of human rights which originated with the Magna Carta limits the power of government to interfere unreasonably in the lives of its citizens (e.g. the government may not imprison anyone without a trial before a jury etc.).
Islamists like Abu Qatada - who has been named by four countries as al-Qaeda's spiritual ambassador in Europe - exploit the individualistic European concept of human rights to claim that their own human rights would be violated if they were extradited to their countries of origin, as they would face inhumane treatment there.
Now I cannot think of a single Islamic country where either police corruption and brutality or prison conditions well below western standards, are not daily facts of life. Even in a relatively westernised Islamic country such as Pakistan I have seen a prison room about 15 feet square holding around 20 or so prisoners with temperatures of up to 45 degrees centigrade. The combination of these conditions with the present UK government's adoption of the European concept of human rights - that prioritises individual rights over those of the country as a whole - has created the problems we now face. In a nutshell, it is the European concept of human rights that almost inevitably allows Islamist terrorists such as Abu Qatada to hold the UK government over a barrel, by claiming their own human rights would be violated if they were extradited to an Islamic country.
That is why a future Conservative government must rewrite Labour's Human Rights Act, basing it on our historic British approach to human rights, instead of the European one. This would effectively remove the rights of non British nationals who pose a threat to our security to remain in the UK. This is the only way to guarantee that the rights of ordinary law abiding British citizens to 'security' and 'freedom from terrorism' take priority over the supposed 'rights' of Islamist terrorists from other countries who abuse our freedoms here.
