The Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC) has just passed one of those legal rulings which now occur so often that you become numb to it.
From the BBC:
The alleged leader of an al-Qaeda plot to bomb targets in north-west England has won his appeal against deportation.
A special immigration court said Abid Naseer was an al-Qaeda operative - but could not be deported because he faced torture or death back home in Pakistan.
Mr Naseer, 23, was one of 10 Pakistani students arrested last April as part of a massive counter-terrorism operation in Liverpool and Manchester.
Another student, Ahmad Faraz Khan, also 23, won his appeal on similar grounds.
Lawyers for the new Home Secretary, Theresa May, said they would not be appealing against the ruling, handed down by the Special Immigration Appeals Commission.
...
"We are satisfied that Naseer was an al-Qaeda operative who posed and still poses a serious threat to the national security of the United Kingdom," the judgement said.
It added: "Subject to the issue of safety on return, it is conducive to the public good that he should be deported."
And yet nothing can be done.
The SIAC are not to blame. They are merely following process. The blame lies with those that have allowed British sovereignty to be eroded to the extent that the Home Secretary no longer has the right to deport national security threats. In fact, the European Court of Human Rights does not even allow the Home Secretary to balance the risk of allowing a national security threat remaining in the country against his potential mistreatment abroad.
These men will now probably be put under control order (which the Conservatives have previously stated they want to scrap). So that's two more al-Qaeda operatives that we are paying to keep here.
A further point - the SIAC ruled that deportation could not take place due to the "long and well-documented history of disappearances" of those who end up in Pakistani prisons. Certainly, they are probably not going to win any best practice examples any time soon.
A couple of recent examples of the conditions in Pakistani jails, however, are worth bearing in mind. Despite being on death row, Omar Sheikh - the former LSE student who masterminded the kidnapping of Daniel Pearl - was ordering assassination attempts against Gen Pervez Musharraf from his Hyderabad jail. Furthermore, another British citizen, Rashid Rauf - al-Qaeda's head of operations in Europe - simply walked out of police custody in Pakistan.
It seems as if the "long and well-documented history of disappearances" in Pakistan prisons can cut both ways.
