Thank goodness that, for his part in the 9/11 attack on the Trade Towers, Zacarias Moussaoui was tried and sentenced in the US rather than here. Had he received a life sentence here, then he would have been back in flight-school before you could say Charles Clarke, let alone Jack … Straw or David Blunkett.
Were Moussaoui to have been imprisoned here for life, then, surely, to make room for another convict it would not have been long before his sentence was commuted. After that, he would have been released into the community rather than deported to obviate his need to seek asylum to avoid deportation, thereby risking the Government no longer being able to boast proudly about having met its target of reduced asylum applications.
I kid ye not, as the late lamented Frankie Howard used to say.
As well as reporting Moussaoui’s life sentence which, given his clearly stated preference for the death penalty, was the right one, today’s Times reports that, among foreign prisoners released into the community in March 2005 rather than deported as their trial judges had often recommended, was a 25 year old Iraqi Kurd named Caliph Ali Asmar, now being sought by the police as a suspect in two cases, one of attempted murder the other of rape, both having allegedly occurred since his release.
And there are many other similar such cases too.
Official government statistics suggest 50 % of prisoners re-offend within two years of their release from prison. As there is no good reason why the rate of recidivism among foreign prisoners should be any lower than that among British ones, the Government’s continued present and protracted unwillingness to face up to the difficulties to which its current mode of commitment to human rights has given rise as regards the deportation of foreign criminals means there is much innocent blood that recent successive Home Secretaries can be said to have on their hands -- up to and including the present one.
Of course, our present Home Secretary is busy claiming to be solving the problem, rather than exacerbating it. He is reported as having announced in parliament yesterday emergency measures designed to make the deportation of all foreigners convicted in the UK of any imprisonable offence their presumed final destination, after emerging from the judicial process.
Sadly, but all too predictably, in making his announcement, Charles Clarke revealed himself no more able a legislator than his dismal handling of the problem since he was first made aware of it has revealed him to be an administrator.
What the Home Office needs are not more powers, but the ability and will to make use of theoretically existing ones which, in practice, the government has stymied by the innocent and ham-fisted way in which it incorporated the European Convention on Human Rights into British law.
Not all foreign nationals convicted of imprisonable offences merit deportation. Such draconian measures as Clarke is now proposing are only liable to clog up the courts and tribunals with countless appeals rather than help matters.
In any event, those measures fail to get to grips with the real problem that is handicapping the British authorities in dealing with this rapidly burgeoning category of offenders.
What the British authorities really could do with is freedom to deport foreigners convicted of serious crimes and those deemed a threat to the public good, who for one good reason or another have not been able to be convicted in court of any such offences. To secure such powers all the government need do is unshackle the judicial system from the human rights chains with which it has encumbered it which prevent it from operating as it should.
Why the Government continues to resist talking this option is unclear.
Could it be such move would risk threatening to deprive Cherrie Blair of sufficient income to be able to continue to afford her current hair-stylist after her husband has vacated his current office?
Who knows? Who cares?
In connection with the whole matter concerning foreign prisoners who have been released into the community rather than deported, all anyone needs to know is that the present Government has displayed a degree of incompetence and indifference to the well-being and security of ordinary citizens that is well nigh on scandalous.
It makes all the rest of its incompetence and corruption pale into insignificance besides it.
What we want from the current Government is less by way of diversity targets and inclusion initiatives and a bit more in the way of protection of the decent law-abiding and long-suffering public.
Charles Clarke is a miserable shambolic failure who, the moment the scandal broke, had he any honour, should have done the honourable thing and resigned, rather than attempt to brazen out the storm by introducing hasty and ill-judged measures that avoid addressing the fundamental issue that gave rise to the current problem.
By refusing to withdraw temporarily from the European Convention on Human Rights so as to be able to derogate from those of its provisions which currently enable convicted foreigners to be able to claim asylum, something that numerous other signatories to it have done, the present Government has condemned innumerable innocent British citizens to death, assault or rape at the hands of foreign thugs.
'Tough on crime. Tough on the causes of crime' , was Tony Blair's promise. Only so long as the criminal is a British citizen and not a foreigner, it seems to have turned out in practice.