A terrorists’ charter

TO British ears, there’s a bitterly familiar ring to the revelation that Spanish authorities tried to deport the Moroccan imam accused of radicalising the Barcelona terror cell – but were prevented from doing so by European human rights laws.

Indeed, for year after year this country has fought to get rid of hate preachers and terror suspects, only to come up repeatedly against the same obstacle.

Think of Abu Hamza, at last serving life in an American jail after an eight-year legal battle to resist extradition from the UK on charges of terrorism. Or Abu Qatada, the Jordanian national who arrived in Britain on a forged passport in 1993 and fought deportation for more than a decade – after first being detained under anti-terrorism laws in 2002.

Indeed, the Barcelona victims might be alive today if Abdelbaki Es Satty hadn’t been allowed to carry on poisoning impressionable young minds after winning his appeal against deportation in 2015.

As we have argued, the West’s military interventions – in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya and elsewhere – have done nothing to rid our continent of the scourge of terrorism. Indeed, there is every reason to believe they’ve increased the danger.

In the fight against terrorists, couldn’t we achieve far more at home by reforming the human rights laws that protect them?