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Abu Qatada’s lawyers announce the cleric would voluntarily return to Jordan when the treaty between the UK and Jordan is ratified (10 May 2013)

Date: 10/05/2013
Duncan Lewis, Legal News Solicitors, Abu Qatada’s lawyers announce the cleric would voluntarily return to Jordan when the treaty between the UK and Jordan is ratified

The lawyers of the Islamist cleric Abu Qatada have announced that Abu Qatada would voluntarily go back to Jordan if and when its parliament ratifies a new deportation treaty with Britain. The announcement is a major breakthrough for home secretary who is battling to deport him but has been unsuccessful in her attempts.
The pledge had come with the filing of bail application for Abu Qatada. Whether he would be released on bail by the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (Siac) will be known only on May 20 when the application hearing has been adjourned to.
The treaty with the Jordanians is supposedly designed to ensure he would face a fair trial on terror charges without the use of evidence obtained by torture, has been signed on 24 March.
Abu Qatada has been detained in a maximum-security prison in Britain for a total of seven years and five months while his deportation saga has continued.
The Special Immigration Appeals Commission (Siac) was told on Friday that 17 illicit mobile phones, including six that were switched on, were found by police last month at his London home during a brief period while he was out on bail. They also found 55 CDs and DVDs.
Lawyers for Abu Qatada had told Siac that if and when the Jordanian parliament ratifies the treaty he would voluntarily return to Jordan.
The issue of his deportation has been a bone of contention for the home office with the home secretary having tried all legal options open to her. The pressure on her was such that after the appeals court rejected her plea for appealing at the Supreme Court there was a call for examining the possibilities of withdrawing from the European Convention on Human Rights albeit temporarily while the government could seek the clerics deportation.
David Cameron was examining the possibility of withdrawing on a temporary basis from the European convention on human rights which event the Downing Street had confirmed.
The home secretary, Theresa May, was also forced to admit that the radical Islamist cleric Abu Qatada was to remain in Britain for many months yet, despite announcing she had signed a new treaty with Jordan designed to finally clear the way for his deportation.
She was also accused of having surrendered by some of her rightwing MPs after she had distanced from suggestions that the UK could temporarily withdraw from the European convention on human rights she had retracted by saying that the policy was just an option.
The Liberal Democrats insisted there was no official plan to withdraw from the ECHR, while the former Lord Chancellor Kenneth Clarke, the minister without portfolio who attends cabinet, said it was not the policy of the current government to withdraw either from a short period or for a lengthy period from the European convention on human rights.
If and when the treaty is truly ratified by the Jordan government it has to be seen whether the announcement made by the lawyers would stand on the voluntary return of the cleric.

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