It will soon be two years since the July 7th bombs detonated across London, and memories have begun to grow a bit dim. Though not so dim, perhaps, as the legal team representing Sheikh Abdullah El-Faisal who was jailed for incitement in 2003. El-Faisal’s representatives have just announced that they will fight attempts to deport him on his early release from prison in a few weeks time - on human-rights grounds.
The Jamaican-born convert El-Faisal was one of the main influences on the 7/7 bomber Jermaine Lindsay, who murdered twenty-six of his fellow passengers on their way to work two summers ago.
He preached at the mosque in Brixton, South-London, where the ‘shoe-bomber’ Richard Reid is believed to have met Zacharias Moussaoui, the 20th hijacker from 9/11. He has called for his followers to attack ‘all unbelievers’ using whatever weapons they have at their disposal, whether ‘planes’, ‘tanks’, ‘guns’ or – somewhat optimistically, for the time-being, we hope – ‘nuclear missiles’. He has tried to recruit schoolboys for terror-training camps, promising them the standard 72 virgins if they fight in a holy war. And he has been particularly keen on calling for the murder of Jews, Americans and Hindus.
Given all that, his solicitor, Khalid Sofi, ought to be laughed out of court for his submission that deporting El-Faisal would breach his human rights under article 8 of the European Convention. Mr Sofi (who also happens to be chair of the Muslim Council of Britain’s legal affairs committee) said of El-Faisal: ‘His case is based on his human right [to] a family life. He has a family here, he has children and wants to remain here with them.’
I am sure he does. But how hollow does that demand for ‘a family life’ ring in these circumstances? While the British people, including Hindus and Jews pay for Mr Sofi to drag this ridiculous plea out, there are 52 families in London alone whose right to a family life was never open for appeal, can’t be remedied and never appears to have troubled the mind of Mr Sofi’s client.
