Rewrite our laws to punish treason
HOW WAS the case against exemplary teacher Jean McCormick ever allowed to proceed and how much did it cost the taxpayer?
A PE teacher with glowing references and with no complaints over nearly four decades in the classroom, Mrs McCormick, 67, found herself at Chester magistrates court charged with assault after a mother called the police when her son came home with a bruise on his arm.
Fortunately, sanity prevailed, in the form of District Judge Nicholas Sanders, who threw out the case, slammed the “flimsiest of evidence” put forward and laid into the “irrational and overprotective mother”. He even suggested this troublemaker had a vendetta against the teacher and hailed Mrs McCormick’s “stunning set of references”.
It is understandable but also regrettable we cannot be allowed to learn the identity of the mother. But as Mrs McCormick confirmed that she will now retire, we must hope the mother will one day reflect on the stain she sought to bring to a blameless professional as she reached the end of her working life.
BY THE time you read this, it is not unlikely the ranks of the Independent Group of MPs will have been swollen by further defections. Politics can be a rather moribund affair and this has added some zest to proceedings, as well as a sizeable dash of trickery and scheming.
One observation, however. Can the next defectors crack on with telling us what it is they believe in and wish to achieve rather than boring us to tears with “back stories” about how they joined as a starryeyed ingénue, horrified by social injustice?
HER REACTION was surely the most telling thing. Loathsome jihadi bride Shamima Begum was “shocked” when she learned she was being stripped of her British citizenship and denied any right to return to the UK.
However, she cheerfully informed us a few days earlier that she was “ok” with IS victims being decapitated and “wasn’t fazed” the first time she saw a severed head in a basket.
Let’s get this straight: she has no problem looking at the head of someone who has been executed in the most brutal fashion by a gang of barbaric, medieval terrorists. But a country exerting its right to bar the return of someone who opted to sneak abroad to support a jihadist organisation responsible for the murder of many knocks her for six.
Doesn’t that tell you all you need to know about the complexity of the issues surrounding the 19-year-old runaway who chose to leave the security and care of the country to which she is now so desperate to return for the glamour and supposed romantic allure of being the bride of a jihadist.
For once, we had a politician who actually spoke for so many of us when the Home Secretary Sajid Javid said there can be no place in the UK for someone who “turns their back on the fundamental values we cherish”.
Regrettably, at the time of writing, the legal grounds by which Javid hoped he could bolt the door to this schoolgirl turned jihadi mum seem to be shifting beneath him.
Javid had hoped that, as her parents are of Bangladeshi origin, the UK could deny her access, leaving her with only the option of taking up Bangladeshi citizenship.
That possibility was totally dashed when Bangladesh minister of home affairs Asaduzzaman Khan stated in Dhaka there was “no question” of her being allowed into the country.
We cannot, and should not, make this young woman stateless – which is pretty much where we find ourselves. It was after the horrors of the Second World War that international law was brought in forbidding any country being able to do that to its citizens.
There is an outside chance that she could apply to the Netherlands for citizenship, as the father of her child is Dutch-born jihadi Yago Riedijk, who has been convicted of terror offences in absentia. But there is no guarantee that she will be successful. A lengthy, and costly, legal battle is on the cards with appeals and counter-appeals sure to rack up work for those lawyers and their eye-watering fees, all of which we are likely to be funding.
However, before you are drawn to the conclusion that at least Sajid Javid is trying to do the right thing and it is arcane laws that are holding him and the Government back, ponder this.
The chilling truth is that our politicians had at least FOUR years to draft and implement legislation that could have prevented this.
At the time that Begum and her troublemaking, thrill-seeking jihadi girlfriends were sneaking off to Turkey, the images of Western hostages pleading for their lives as they were dragged wearing orange jumpsuits on to some godforsaken beach where a knife was held to their throats, seemed ceaseless.
The scale of the looming problem was plain as there were stories of hundreds of Europeans falling for this vile ideology and flocking to the war zone to sign up. The barbarity continued. As IS gained more ground, rape and torture were used to subjugate any opposition.
As well as being beheaded, another favourite method of execution was to imprison the victim in a cage, douse them with petrol and set them alight. At the same time, you risked being thrown from the roof of a tall building for the crime of being a homosexual.
AND PRECISELY what did our lawmakers do? Nothing. While there was no shortage of condemnation and words of outrage, where were the concerted efforts and thought processes to ensure these monsters would never be able to return?
Oxford law Professor Richard Ekins rightly highlights the fact that our current laws do nothing to “address the wickedness of choosing to side with your country’s enemies” and it’s shameful that there are suggestions now of attempting to rewrite the Treason Act of 1351 to legislate against returning terrorists.
Last week, US President Donald Trump said he would soon be releasing the 800 or so jihadist fighters held by US and Kurdish forces.
What it says about Britain that around 360 of those are from here is another matter. But unless laws are made – and made quickly – get ready for the very real prospect of a jihadist, or his bride, moving into a house near you.