Radical imam dodged deportation
THE imam suspected of radicalising the Barcelona terror cell used human rights laws to avoid being deported. Abdelbaki Es Satty was ordered to leave Spain on his release from jail for drug offences.
He appealed against his deportation to Morocco and was told in March 2015 he had been successful, it was claimed.
The preacher is accused of radicalising the terrorists who killed 15 last week. It is said the imam targeted young men in Ripoll, near the French border, where the cell originated.
He was jailed for four years in 2010 for smuggling cannabis. As well as fighting his deportation, he also claimed asylum, which Spanish newspaper El Mundo said was a ‘standard move to legitimise’ his presence in the country.
He was killed when the gang’s bomb factory exploded on Wednesday night.
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?