Terrorism, Asylum Seekers and the Human Right to Life

The United Kingdom is set to release Abu Qatada, a Muslim cleric the Home Office believes is a risk to national security. Qatada is already wanted on terrorism charges in Jordan -- a place he apparently can't be sent because the Jordanian system of justice includes the use of torture. As such, Qatada will be released on strict bail conditions necessitating that the British state spend lots of money watching him to ensure he doesn't commit mass murder.

This bizarre state of affairs is no longer uncommon. There are examples like it in many Western countries. A dangerous man linked to terrorism or crime manages to discreetly make it past border controls before the civil servants know what's up. When they realize what's going on, they can no longer send them back where they came from because regulations on human rights prevent deportations to hellholes that use torture. Actually, that's no longer the standard -- Britain can't even deport asylum seekers to an EU member like Greece, for fear that they will be subjected to inhumane or degrading treatment.

Clearly, not all refugee or immigrant claimants are a danger to the state, but the courts have effectively determined that countries like the UK have only two options when it comes to the dangerous kind we used to employ people to keep out: let obvious threats wander around freely, or monitor the worst suspects at ruinous expense to prevent mass slaughter of innocents here or abroad.

Human rights are being invoked to eviscerate nations' ability to control the entry of war criminals and terrorists into their countries. But why should the human rights of these false "refugees" or "asylum seekers" trump citizens who will now have to rub elbows with genocidal lunatics and would-be suicide bombers?

Can we not make the case that when someone is determined by the Home Office or the cops to be a major security risk (ie. "They're likely going to kill people, or incite people to kill people, if we don't watch them constantly") that the human right to life of all citizens in the nation trumps the right of the traveling maniac?

Until now, the human rights of extremists like Qatada have effectively been seen in a vacuum by the courts: the person has the right to not be tortured, so he stays. Seems simple enough.

But why can't we see the situation as a case of competing rights, where the right of one person to not be sent to a place where they might be tortured must be weighed quantitatively against the human right to life (thus far, a concept mainly confined to archaic and overwhelmingly dumb debates on the legal status of a fetus) of residents of the suspect terrorist's chosen neighborhood?

It may sound complicated, but this approach is essentially a common-sense reversion to what the rules were supposed to be for allowing people into the country in the first place. If a border agent or officer determines that someone is a terror risk, then ipso facto, that person will, left to his own devices, likely infringe upon the human right to life of everyone in the community -- potentially, everyone in a given city.

Some would say that this still doesn't necessarily solve the problem of where to put the terror suspect. After all, just because you don't have to let them in doesn't mean you can send them back to a country that might torture them. And we're back where we started.

Not necessarily. Right now, we deal with these cases as though terrorists and criminals just materialize out of mid-air and take up their place in a lineup of perfectly innocent and ordinary immigrants -- and we hope that our officers will be able to pick them out of a crowd (Not always) and do something about it when they find them (Not so much). We do not effectively deal with their decision to come to our countries in the first place -- in other words, we don't assume that they are human beings with the ability to reason out whether they would be allowed in; "Hmmm. I better not bother coming to Britain or the USA or Canada because I've taken part in genocide / worked for Al Qaeda / made bombs in my apartment for years as a hobby". They have put the onus on us to deal with them and presumably deliver them from possible torture, but we ought to put the onus on them to say, "if I am a terrorist asshole, I should not bother the border officials of a country I hate. I've committed greivous crimes against humanity, or have attempted to do so, and the West is not an escape valve for scum like me."

To make this clear, imagine if every single member of Somalia's Al Shabaab group that has committed every atrocity under the sun, from gang rape and forced starvation of captive populations to torture and beheading, showed up at Heathrow airport -- or worse, they've actually managed to somehow smuggle themselves into London. They've thrown away their identification and all of them claim asylum, pointing out that if they go back, they'll likely face death at the hands of the government forces they've been fighting for decades. Even if they are not executed, these thousands of asylum seekers will almost certainly face torture in prison. At the same time, these people make no effort to hide their prior statements that all Infidels, including everyone residing in the UK, are to be hastily dispatched by their pious force of arms.

Perhaps this group would be detained -- but for how long? Eventually, some or all could be released on the streets -- certainly many of them would not be sent back to Somalia. It's doubtful that any of them would be sent back under current rules.

But if we were to say that these war criminals ought to have known they would never legally be allowed into the country, then the onus is on them. The state owes them no obligation of safe haven and certainly would not be liable to pay for the constant monitoring of several thousand would-be killers. Practicality dictates that we send them back to Somalia -- in the absence of a third country that would take them -- firstly, to be blunt, they're not our problem -- but mainly, because the state is obligated to ensure that these fanatical killers do not become a lethal problem here, infringing on the right to life of innocent people.

Justice demands that we keep terror suspects and other scum outside our borders. Courts must not be allowed to run roughshod over the human rights of innocents in the aim of protecting the rights of the damned.

Jonathon Narvey is the Editor of The Propagandist