Abu Hamza and latest blow to UK sovereignty
Terrorist’s criminal daughter-in-law cannot be deported because of human rights laws
THE daughter-in-law of Abu Hamza cannot be deported from Britain despite a criminal past because of human rights laws, an EU law chief has ruled.
The mother of one was jailed for a year in 2012 for trying to smuggle a mobile phone Sim card to the notorious terrorist while he was being held in Belmarsh prison.
In a case which will intensify concern over Europe’s influence over Britain’s sovereignty at a crucial point in the Prime Minister’s renegotiations ahead of the EU referendum, the Home Office’s ability to deport the Moroccan national has been left in serious doubt.
Maciej Szpunar, an advocate general at the European Court of Justice (ECJ), said that “in principle” her deportation would deprive her son, who is a British citizen, of the right to family life.
The case of the woman, who can only be identified as CS, only came to light after Philip Davies, a Tory backbencher, raised it in the House of Commons in a potential breach of an order imposed by an immigration court.
The woman – who was not named by Mr Davies – still cannot be identified by name.
The row increases the pressure on David Cameron over the future of Britain’s involvement in the EU and his efforts to secure a better deal for the UK.
The Prime Minister’s renegotiations have not touched on the powers of the ECJ over laws passed in Britain. Earlier this week he promised to bring forward legislative proposals that will “put beyond doubt” the sovereignty of the Commons over European law.
MPs and campaigners last night said the only way to ensure an end to such situations was to leave the EU.
Steve Baker, the chairman of the Conservatives for Britain group, said: “Time and again I have pointed out that we cannot govern our country and deliver the decisions that the public want when we are subject to the jurisdiction of the ECJ. Once again we can see that the only safe choice is to take back control by voting to leave.”
Bernard Jenkin, a Conservative MP on the board of the Vote Leave campaign, said: “This shows that the very security of our nation and our ability to deport terrorist suspects is under the thumb of the European judges and it should not be so.”
Robert Oxley, a Vote Leave spokesman, added: “EU judges are attempting to stop us from deporting Abu Hamza’s daughter-in-law.
“This dangerous farce shows just how damaging the EU is for our security. The only way we can fight terrorism is to vote ‘Leave’ and take control – it’s the only safe option.”
The woman was jailed for 12 months for trying to smuggle the Sim card to Hamza while he was held in Britain’s most secure prison awaiting extradition to the US to face terror offences.
Hamza was later sent to America, where he was jailed for life after being
ABU HAMZA’S daughter-in-law, who can only be identified by the initials CS, came to Britain from her native Morocco in 2003, the year after marrying the hate preacher’s son.
The Home Office, then under the tenure of Labour’s David Blunkett, granted her a visa on the basis of her marriage to Hamza’s son, a British citizen, who also cannot be named for legal reasons.
At the end of October the following year, CS was granted indefinite leave to remain in this country, a decision rubber-stamped under Mr Blunkett’s successor, Charles Clarke.
Within two years CS and Hamza’s son had divorced, but they were later reconciled and re-married here and CS became pregnant. It was the birth of that child which played a crucial role in CS’s fight to stay in Britain despite her later actions. The child’s birth, regis- tered in Hammersmith and Fulham borough in west London in July 2011, became the foundation of her claim to the European Court of Justice and yesterday’s dramatic development on the floor of the House of Commons.
In December 2010, while newly pregnant, CS walked into Belmarsh prison with a mobile phone Sim card hidden under her Islamic robes.
Staff at the gate of the Category A south-east London jail, which then as now held some of the country’s most dangerous Islamist terrorists, had good reason to be cautious.
Hook-handed Hamza, the former overlord of Finsbury Park mosque, was one of Britain’s highest-profile prisoners – a firebrand preacher convicted of inciting murder and facing extradition on terror charges to the United States.
Held within the notorious Belmarsh “jail within a jail”, visitors were scrutinised with extra care and searches discovered the Sim in the coin pocket of the jeans CS was wearing under her robes. Arrested on the spot, CS was “well aware” that the mobile phone equipment was banned in prisons, a judge later commented.
In May 2012, CS was jailed for 12 months at Blackfriars Crown Court after she was convicted of conveying a prohibited article into prison. She took her case to the Appeal Court, claiming she should be released for the sake of her son, by then 10 months old.
CS at first claimed she had put the Sim card in her pocket several days earlier and “forgotten about it”, said Mr Justice Openshaw, who added: “The jury clearly didn’t accept that claim.”
The judge, sitting with Lord Judge, the Lord Chief Justice at the time, and Mr Justice Irwin, ruled it was “highly relevant to the seriousness of the offence” that CS was visiting Hamza.
“The particular danger of conveying a telephone Sim card to someone such as Abu Hamza is immediately obvious,” he said, rejecting her appeal.
“He could use it to convey messages of support to his followers outside, or use it to encourage or incite the commission of further offences.
“The risk that this may come to pass is a seriously aggravating factor in the commission of this particular offence.”
The Home Office, under Theresa May in August 2012, told CS that she was to be returned to Morocco under laws which state that any foreign national jailed for 12 months or more is subject to “automatic deportation”.
In response, CS, now freed from jail, applied for asylum – a claim rejected by the Home Office in early 2013. CS appealed to the first-tier immigration and asylum tribunal, which ruled that deportation would breach her human rights under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, the right to family life, and Article 3, which prohibits inhuman or degrading treatment. It also granted CS anonymity even though she had been named publicly in the criminal courts.
Mrs May’s officials appealed to the upper immigration tribunal and argued that deportation of CS would not deprive her child, an EU citizen, of his rights. The upper tribunal then asked the European Court of Justice (ECJ) to rule on whether deporting CS from Britain would “deprive the Union citizen child of the genuine enjoyment of the substance of his rights” when the mother was the sole carer for the child.
Earlier this week, the ECJ’s Polish advocate general, Maciej Szpunar, published his opinion on the case.
In what could be a significant blow to British deportation laws, the advocate general ruled it was a breach of human rights to remove someone in those circumstances. However, he also stressed that governments could consider whether each case represents a “genuine, present and sufficiently serious threat” to society. He set out in detail CS’s case history but did not reveal her links with Hamza.
MPs yesterday expressed their outrage at the Luxembourg court’s decision, which could open the door to hundreds of low-level criminals claiming the right to stay in Britain.
Philip Davies, the Conservative MP, took the unusual step of revealing in the Commons that the woman is Hamza’s daughter-in-law. “This is a very serious matter and is something that this country and this House should be aware of,” he said.
The advocate general’s opinion is not binding on the ECJ and its judges will deliberate and deliver a judgment at a later date, but the court usually follows the advocate general’s decision.
A Home Office spokesman said: “The Government notes the opinion of the advocate general. We await the European Court of Justice’s judgment.”
The final fate of CS has not yet been decided by the British court.
Four of Hamza’s sons, including his stepson, have been convicted of criminal offences ranging from plotting a terrorist campaign to fraud.
His eldest son, Mohamed Kamel Mostafa, and stepson Mohssin Ghailam were both jailed for their part in planning a terrorist bombing campaign in Yemen in 1999. Mostafa was sentenced to three years in jail and Ghailam, then 18, was sentenced to seven years. In 2012, another son, Imran Mostafa, then 20, was jailed for 11 years for a £70,000 armed raid on a Norfolk jewellers.
‘This is a very serious matter and is something that this country . . . should be aware of’