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The Rights Issue
Well, it took them a few days, but the British press has finally scented the truth about the Learco Chindamo case. In reality, there is little that the nation's press, people or politicians can do about cases which fall under European legislation; and that the government's haste to keep the hearing findings from the public reflect a desire to cover that uncomfortable truth, as calls for a referendum on the EU treaty grow louder.
For those outside the UK, the case centres on a 26 year old immigrant from Italy, Learco Chindamo. Twelve years ago, Chindamo led a gang of murderous thugs who stabbed to death Philip Lawrence, a London headmaster. Their victim had intervened when they were threatening one of the headmaster's pupils. Chindamo was sentenced to life; he is likely to be released next year.
Mr Lawrence's widow expected - and, it appears, had been given assurances that this would be the case - that Chindamo would be deported after his release. Chindamo's lawyers argued successfully that, deporting him to a country where he had not lived for 20 years and where he has no family would deprive him of the right to family life, which is protected by the Human Rights Act. The media and most of the public have rightly taken Mrs Lawrence's side; spokesmen for Britain's human rights industry have argued that while the feelings of the victim and the revulsion of the public are taken into account in sentencing, they do not form the basis of a justice system which is based on the rehabilitation of offenders.
All well and good. Chindamo's crime was monstrous: It is staggering that a young thug with a string of previous offences behind him before the murder of Mr Lawrence is due to be released. But even those like us at EURSOC, who have no sympathy for Chindamo or those like him, find it difficult to see how a court could deport him to a country which he left when he was six, where he has no family or roots, or where he doesn't speak the language. His mother is Filipino and lives in London; his father is a mafiosa killer who is currently on the run. Which Italian city would he go to? How do Britain's ports and airports propose keeping him out of the country should he try to rejoin his mother? How would they continue to do this if the case set a precedent and EU offenders were booted out to their respective nations following their release from prison?
Especially when EU legislation forbids deportation unless the subject poses a grave danger to health and public safety? Chindamo could certainly offend again, despite his lawyer's assurances that he is a reformed character: the Home Secretary certainly believes he poses a threat.
But the secrecy which surrounded the case was revealing. The Asylum and Immigration Tribunal, which heard his case, was repulsively high-handed. According to the Times, it referred to “hysterical misinformed articles in the gutter press” and ruled that the press should be kept from the hearing. The Home Office, for its part, kept the ruling from the public, even after Chindamo's lawyer had been blowing off to the BBC on how the Human Rights Act's Chapter 8 - a guarantee of full and fulfilling family life - had preserved his client's right to remain in the UK.
Even the Times admits that it is difficult to disagree that the Human Rights laws are clear on this. However, the real point, it argues, is how the Home Office tried to cover up the story:
"Where this landmark ruling packs a dynamite charge is in the section on the appellant’s rights as an EU citizen under the 2004 Citizens Directive, as incorporated last year into British law," it says,
"Only last month Gordon Brown insisted that all foreign criminals “will be deported”. Yet under EU law, the Government has known for three years that it has no such powers. Each case must be considered on merit and, no matter how repugnant the crime, the only permissible grounds for deportation are “a genuine, present and sufficiently serious threat” to society’s “fundamental interests” or “imperative grounds of public security”. No one fitting that description would be recommended for release by the Parole Board. As the Home Office solicitor complained at the hearing, so long as the criminal has lived in this country for five years or more - whether or not at Her Majesty’s Pleasure - Britain “could never deport a lifer who had been released from prison and was an EU citizen”. Is that why the Chindamo case was kept secret?"
A day later, the Telegraph addresses the same issue, noting the "utter powerlessness" many Britons felt about their right to have any say in how the worst criminals are treated:
"The tribunal was therefore simply playing it by the book in recommending against Chindamo's deportation. The problem does not lie with it, but with European law. This EU directive, like so many affecting virtually every aspect of life in this country, may be meat and drink to a handful of lawyers but has simply not registered with the wider public. Like most Brussels-made legislation, it gets only the most cursory glance from our elected representatives in Parliament before becoming the law of the land. And we are not talking about a few measures at the margins. The EU is now responsible for more than three-quarters of legislation in member states."
The Telegraph ties this long-term transfer of power in with the new Constitutional Treaty, which represents a further passing on of sovereignty to Brussels (though the PM Gordon Brown denies this is worthy of a referendum).
The spectacle has been unedifying, but has shown better than any novel or film how Britain works today. With the exception of poor Frances Lawrence, no-one comes out of the debacle well. The government, for covering up the case to disguise its impotence, the opposition, following David Cameron's demand that the Human Rights Act be scrapped, or the media, which up to now clearly missed the point. The justice system, which releases the worst criminals on a clearly unwilling public. The parole system, too: Mrs Lawrence was telephoned by Chindamo's parole officer in 2002, who accused her of saying that Chindamo had shown no remorse for the killing. The parole officer demanded that she apologise to the killer. When she replied she had said no such thing, the parole officer contemptuously accused her of trying to block his client's release.
Indeed, Mrs Lawrence has shown incredible dignity and stoicism throughout the affair. She is no populist fury "hell-bent on vengeance" as the parole officer doubtless views her as; instead, she is a supporter of the Human Rights Act and the European Convention on Human Rights, merely puzzled by how a guide to basic freedoms ended up being intrepreted in such a perverse fashion.
END NOTE: There is a clear-headed look at the Human Rights Act in The Scotsman:
"...A growing number of critics fear that as well as incorporating the ECHR into British law, the act also gave judges too much latitude in how they apply the charter's rights.
"According to Anthony Browne, director of the Policy Exchange think-tank, the act has frequently been misinterpreted by British courts, with problematic consequences.
""The act has important caveats that relate to the wider national interest and national security, but British judges do not take enough account of them," Dr Browne said.
""The act has opened the door to judicial activism, judges setting themselves up in direct opposition to the legislature and using the law to influence social and criminal justice policy.""
