A fundamental principle is that you’re charged,tried and punished under whatever the law was at the time of the offence, not whatever happened to the law after you dunnit.
Alex Norris, the Home Office minister, said “all options are on the table” when asked in the Commons whether the Government could fast-track legislation to pave the way for the removal of Shabir Ahmed.
Ahmed, 73, was released from prison last week after serving 14 years of a 22-year sentence for 30 child rape offences. He cannot be returned to Pakistan despite being stripped of his UK citizenship.
He has avoided deportation because the Immigration Act 1971 exempts Commonwealth citizens such as Ahmed who came to Britain before 1973 and have lived here for at least five years.
Yes, yes, we all want ‘im gone etc. And yet he is indeed protected by that law. So, that’s that I’m afraid.
We could get all Roper etc. But consider this. Given the cunts who gain power in this country anyone really want them to be able to change the law retrospectively and so nail I, you, we, us?
Quite….
Then if he cannot be deported why should he ever be released?
Indeed. The bit that said ““after serving 14 years of a 22-year sentence”
Eight years on Jura if needed, or some other place in Britain where no-one has kids any more and there’s room for a prison.
Indeed, there’s people on indeterminate sentences who might never be released whose crimes are nowhere near as heinous as his.
Can someone explain to me why the Home Secretary can’t just declare this foreigner’s presence not conducive to the public good?
Yes. No need to change the law which currently allows him to stay. Just pass a new law empowering the Home Sec to make orders in the manner you suggest.
Or declaring him an outlaw. I could go with that.
My point was that the Home Sec already has this power
IANAL, but I think a determination that a person’s presence in the UK is “not conducive to the public good” does not automatically trump all immigration rights or legal protections.
By statute, the Home Office has discretionary powers to refuse entry, cancel visas, or deport individuals on “non-conducive” grounds, but these decisions are also subject to the HRA, ECHR and judicial review.
There’s the practical effect that declaring someone an outlaw leaves them no incentive to refrain from any crime, as well as the corrupting effect on others by tempting them to do things to the outlaw which are morally wrong.
Or as it has been put:
…declaring someone an outlaw leaves them no incentive to refrain from any crime…
It also provides a huge incentive not to behave criminally in the first place.
…the corrupting effect on others by tempting them to do things to the outlaw which are morally wrong.
Not so. The state can retain its monopoly on violence towards and punishment of outlaws, while also removing most of their rights rather than granting them extra rights as ‘victims of society’.
That makes no sense. An outlaw is outside the law, so anyone can commit any violence they like against them. That’s the very meaning of the term.
anyone really want them to be able to change the law retrospectively and so nail I, you, we, us?
Surely it depends who they apply to. There’s been a great deal of legislation which has been ideological rather than be passed for the benefit of the British. Like that which secures residence for immigrants against the wishes of a majority of Brits. If you want to reverse that you’ll have to have retrospective legislation.
I think you need to get away from this idea of individual rights & think more in terms of the obligations of individuals. Why should you be obliged to do something against your own interests? Who should you have obligations to?
Further on obligations. When this character was granted British citizenship it was with the implicit obligation that he should obey British laws. That was the price of the rights he was given. It’s not as if he’s accumulated parking tickets. He flagrantly, seriously & intentionally broke British law over an extended period. So why does he get the rights whist not having paid the price?
Because, sadly, we no longer have the concept of an outlaw…
I always look back a few hundred years to see what our ancestors would have done and outlaw is just right. He lived outside the law-without- so cannot ask to be treated within it…
The outlaw was someone who was nor protected by the law so if some other person injured or killed him no criminal prosecution would follow. In effect, revenge was permitted.
Yes. That is the point towards which I think both Theo and I were groping.
Aristotle said that anyone who lives outside the rules of the community [polis] was either a beast or a god. The social contract theorists like Locke and Hobbes (not to mention that nutjob, Rousseau) implied that those who lived outside the norms of civilised life (eg career criminals, bandits) forfeited the protection of the community, because rights required fulfilment of duties as part of the metaphorical social contract. And this was how the American settlers rightly saw matters in the Wild West.
Today, criminals and deviants are seen as victims with rights, not outlaws without rights, which is arse-over-tit.
Some might deplore fatal vengeance against Sabir Ahmed by his victims. To me, it would be not only social hygiene but also justice.
I’ve just commented above to the same effect.
If you want to reverse that you’ll have to have retrospective legislation.
Repealing legislation – ie so that it no longer applies in future – is not retrospective legislation. And if the HRA and EA etc are repealed, Parliament can pass legislation that would encourage Islamic re-migration – eg banning halal slaughter, muslim schools, new mosques, face coverings…. The RoPers would kick off, but re-migration would soon begin…
“The RoPers would kick off, but re-migration would soon begin…”
I have a feeling that their reaction might be a little more active than that.
Which is why it is best done as soon as possible. There will be trouble, so best suffer it while it is doable.
They have no problem doing the same to non moslems in moslem countries, so fuck ’em.
Deliberate understatement by me, Mr W. But let ’em get violent. Government could help by offering generous travel grants to those who peacefully return to their islamic shitholes.
Haven’t we got a lot of spare dinghies? Can’t we just drop him in one of those, and tow him out to beyond our territoriat waters?
You’d think you would have, wouldn’t you? But there was some video on UTube showing dinghies that had been landed at Dover being packed onto a truck which then drove on the ferry for France. There must be a market for them in France. Can’t think of who or where…
So maybe not.
Someone should puncture them as soon as they are dragged up the beach.
You’d literally be arrested for criminal damage. The State wants these people here, and its police do as they’re told.
A fundamental principle is that you’re charged,tried and punished under whatever the law was at the time of the offence, not whatever happened to the law after you dunnit.
This goes back to an Observer article Tim linked to on Sunday. No ex post facto laws.
‘The Observer understands that changes to the representation of the people bill will prevent overseas voters who have returned to the UK from donating more than £100,000 for the first 12 months after they relocate. The move will apply retrospectively from 25 March this year, meaning any sums above £100,000 donated since that day would have to be returned.’
When it comes to ‘fundamental principles’, these have proven highly mutable over the years.
How fundamental are we talking, anyway?
I would say it was long a fundamental principle that any man found to have led a rape gang would be hacked to death in the market square, but we gave that fundamental principle up in return for the promise of state punishment.
By contrast, sending the fucker back to his Pakistani village seems quite mild (though obviously if he tries any of the rapey shit there he will find himself hacked to death in the market square).
So I agree with BiS.
If a law is introduced now to say that any foreigners convicted of sex crimes (or any other crimes) can be deported, I can’t see anything at all wrong with that.
It’s not the thin end of any wedge – it’s the absolute minimum of what the law should say, and would have said in any era prior to the current insane dispensation.
Law is not some abstract concept, it’s – or it should be – designed to improve the lives of those who labour under it.
It should most certainly not be applied in ways that protect foreign gang rapists.
You could probably grandfather stuff in. If you legislated that people newly-convicted of even mild offences, but with previous convictions for more horrible shit, can be airdropped into their country of origin, you’d likely get rid of a lot of them in short order. It’s not like people like this are likely to exercise restraint in future.
You need to be deporting their families too, as they’re all complicit in these crimes and allowing the resentful f*ckers to stay is just asking for more trouble.
I’m sure it would not have been illegal to put him with the “right” fellow prisoners and they would have sorted it
Not so much of an option anymore, seeing as moslem gangs are running some of our prisons now.
Given all the Human Rights laws and that the judges are paid by the State then what the law actually says is pretty irrelevant. Lucy’s case was a turning point for me. The bastard nutter who slaughtered three little girls triggered her and she wrote burn the hotels for all I care which was interpreted by the bent judge to be incitement to commit violence and racist, Yhe bent Starmer told the Speaker to stop MPs discussing the case of the murderer but outlined in great detail how people like Lucy should be tried and convicted. Justice? I remember that from a while ago…
Your government locks up people for mean tweets.
Their not locking this guy up is because THEY DON’T WANT TO.
He didn’t get a 22 year sentence. The nonce who sentenced him put in a clause for automatic early release. The claim of 22 years was merely gaslighting.
And yet….
If we pass a law to deport foreigners with a serious criminal record that applies to all foreigners, as of today. We are not deporting them for their past acts, we are deporting them because of their current status as a foreign felon on our shores.
The other question is, is he still a Pakistani citizen? If not he probably is stateless and can be declared a persona non grata, not wanted on voyage.
Pakistan denies he has citizenship. Still, send him back (after repeal of HRA & EA + reform of judicial review) and let him live arrival-side in Islamabad or Karachi airport…
Just drop him off in the ‘Ghan and slip the Taliban a grand to end his existence. Say what you like about them but they drove all the bacha-bazi enthusiasts out of business.
The law is no more than a codification of how that society believes it ought to behave. This belief changes over time, so some things that were once fine – slavery, capital punishment – are no longer, and other things that were once not fine – bumming – now are.
The point therefore is whether behaviour was legal and uncontroversial at the time. Slavery was, then it wasn’t, hence the compensation paid to slave owners who had owned them perfectly legally before being deprived of their assets.
It is ridiculous to impose retrospective standards of behaviour because at the time, no-one could have accurately foreseen that those standards would change. Retrospective law changes are despotic and political, no more and no less.
I am absolutely fine with capital punishment and I suspect I am not alone.
I am fine with capital punishment, too. With the right protocols, the chances of executing an innocent are vanishingly small. But to get the deterrent effect, the likelihood of arrest and conviction must be high.
I agree with you and Marius. At issue is whether the majority of the demos agrees with us. If it does the law should change. As with so many other questions it won’t, because the Establishment won’t allow it, until the Establishment is, er, “changed”.
But what if a law was despotic & political when it was legislated?
Also – what if the other side laugh and spit in your face when you try to apply these principles to them?
Norman’s position is moral and right in a world where we all play by the rules, more or less.
But for some time now the other side has been wiping its arse with the rules.
You can’t fight fair against the Mau Mau.
This lies in the middle of the path to the US War Between the States.
Compensated emancipation of slaves had occurred in other countries. It was suggested in US. It could never get off the ground because antebellum US was financed by tariffs. Paid by slave owners. Catch 22.
I daresay. Brits who owned slaves in the Caribbean were compensated.
If the nonce’s address was published he’d soon be murdered.
Probably on a tiktok video.
But try to get a jury to convict…
I was going to say this could be dealt with under the law of Pakistan, but that would probably mean his victim being forced to marry him, or upon refusal be executed for having been raped.
However, it is not the only hurdle to Ahmed’s removal as Pakistan is refusing to take him back in a dispute about whether he no longer has citizenship of the country. Ahmed is said to have “ripped up his passport” and renounced his Pakistani citizenship.
Britain disputes Ahmed’s claims, but Pakistan ministers and officials are maintaining that their records show that he is no longer a Pakistan citizen, which prevents his return to the country.
Pakistan and other Third World countries play these games with white countries, because they’re the only ones who fall for it and continue housing and feeding their unwanted criminals.
In the real world of Pakistani immigration enforcement, they don’t give a fuck if unwanted foreigners have “ripped up their passport”, which doesn’t actually mean anything to the law. If they want you gone you’ll get a friendly boot on your arse all the way to the border. As they did a year ago with approximately a million Afghans. They don’t need genetic testing to tell 47 year old illegal immigrants pretending to be children to fuck off either. Amazing.
Anyway, the lesson is, you don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here. Not the British government’s job to provide Forever Homes to Pakistani rapists. Drive him out, it doesn’t matter where to. He can always claim asylum somewhere else. Give him an order to leave by a certain date, or he’ll be arrested and transferred to a Latin American megaprison we’ve contracted with to take cases like his. Great thing about LATAM: they don’t fuck around, and welcome hard currency to fund those megaprisons.
That’s how you do it. Labour will fuck around, try to make it look difficult, and pretend it depends on the opinions of other countries, lawyers, and the alignment of Saturn and Neptune natch, but they’re being forced into adopting deportation rhetoric. Like Gary Glitter being compelled to swear off kids, it’s not even slightly convincing, but an interesting sign of where we are. All over Europe, the demand for Remigration is rising. It’s unstoppable.
The thing about Labour is that they depend on the votes of Asians and Africans in order to have any chance of power, so they have absolutely zero incentive to throw this guy, or any of his mates, out of the country.
Again Tim falls for the ‘If we just play by the rules our opponents will have to do likewise because they would be shown up as hypocrites otherwise’ delusion. Whereas everyone else knows the Left will happily trample over all the laws in the land if it suits them, so we might as well do likewise.
In which case the law is meaningless.
It already is, haven’t you noticed? Whether a law applies to you depends who you are and what you stand for. Some people get a free pass because they have ‘acceptable’ views, for people opposing them the law is enforced in spades.
Yes, it pretty much is.
We live in a time when a woman with a disabled husband and a young daughter can go to prison for three years or so for an intemperate tweet, having been held on remand in order (it seems highly likely) that she could eventually be railroaded into a guilty plea for something that wasn’t even a criminal offence, because she’s against the government filling our country with third world savages who murder children, while gang rapists are not even investigated (but the fathers of their victims are arrested for complaining).
If you think that we live in a country of laws I’m sorry but you’re very wrong.
I wish we did, but if wishes were pound notes etc
When the Home Office get a judge to rule that that bloke from Somalia who entered the country illegak\y has more rights than an indigenous person the law is not meaningless, it’s corrupt…
Indeed. How well did the EHRC protect us during lockdown? Oh that’s right, they can just ignore it whenever they want.
Also the authorities response to the BLM protests during covid lockdowns vs their response to the anti-lockdown marches. You would struggle to find a more blatantly biased enforcement of the law within a very short period of time.
The law in question is the Immigration Act 1971 section 7(1)(b) which was retrospectively inserted into the act by the Nationality, Immigration, and Asylum Act 2002 section 75(3).
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1971/77/section/7
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2002/41/section/75
Laws can be changed retrospectively. They can’t normally be *applied* retrospectively.
This particular law is a constraint on the Home Secretary’s ability to decide to deport someone as not conducive to the public good. If they change the law, then attempts by the Home Secretary to deport someone made before the law change would not thereby be made legal and put into effect, but the Home Secretary could make a new decision after the law change and that would be legal.
The law is vast and complicated and written in language that you need a law degree to understand, and none of us has read all of it. We drift blindly through our lives, entirely ignorant of any bear traps and anti-tank mines hidden in the undergrowth, gripping tightly to our faith in British Justice and our belief that the laws will naturally have been written to fit our own sense of what is just and fair.
Why are you all laughing?
No, seriously. Nearly everybody has a *feeling* for what the law is, or should be, on any matter in accordance with the cultural ideas of fairness they pick up from the society they live in. They follow rules and laws they actually make up themselves, based on what they think the law *ought* to be, and they don’t actually check what it *really* says until they run into trouble, or find themselves disagreeing or arguing about it. So if they wanted to nail us, they certainly could. What do you think the odds are that you’re following the law in every section, paragraph, and sub-section? The official database of legislation has around 80,000 documents in it currently – both primary and secondary legislation.
You don’t sit there on the sofa all day watching the Parliament channel. You don’t stay up late at night reading through acts of Parliament, gaming out how the vague and ambiguous language could be abused. No, you have a life to live. You don’t have time.
They should make Parliament spend one day each year reading out *every* law currently on the books aloud. And not in that legalsmallprintextratermsandconditionsmayapply speech you get in adverts, either. Anything you can’t fit into 24 hours gets automatically repealed. Make it something small and simple enough that ordinary Brits have a chance to *know what the law actually is*. And then employ people to keep an eye on them, and make sure they don’t get tricksy.
But we don’t and won’t, because we have faith, and we don’t have the time.
They don’t and they won’t because to do so would remove all the little tricks and sweeteners for favoured demographics, and elephant traps for the disfavoured, of all kinds. It would also drastically reduce the demand for and incomes of most lawyers. This is the last thing a legalistic Parliament would do, yea, even under threat of neutron bombing.
The government is putting no effort in getting rid of him.
The government is putting effort in telling you why they can’t.
Your government sucks.