Court fears torture in Pakistan, says no to deporting Al Qaeda men

LONDON - Two Al Qaeda operatives can’t be deported to Pakistan as it would infringe on their human rights, a British court has ruled. Pakistan, it said, has a “history of disappearances, illegal detention, and of torture”.

Al Qaeda operatives Abid Naseer, 24, and Ahmad Faraz Khan, 26, had planned to carry out a major terror strike, probably against shoppers in Manchester last year.

Judges of the Special Immigration and Appeals Commission said Naseer and Khan, both of whom came to Britain as students at Liverpool John Moores University, shouldn’t be sent back to Pakistan as they face risk of being tortured, Daily Mail reported Wednesday.

Pakistan had a “long and well documented history of disappearances, illegal detention, and of the torture”, it said.

Home Secretary Theresa May said she was “disappointed” with the ruling and promised to take “all possible measures” to stop them from going back to terrorism.

Conservative MP Douglas Carswell said the court’s ruling was “shocking and outrageous”.

“There can be no clearer illustration that human rights are not working in the national interest. We need a British Bill of Rights that ensures that the state is not overbearing on individual freedoms and liberties but doesn’t stop us removing from the country people who are opposed to our way of life,” Carswell was quoted as saying.

The Telegraph quoted the panel as saying that deporting them would breach Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which outlaws torture.

Naseer and Faraz Khan were part of a group of 12 who were arrested in a police operation in April last year.

The court observed, in its judgement Tuesday, that Naseer was the ringleader of the plot and in regular email contact with a known Al Qaeda email address. MI5 agents suggested that references to four different women was a code for the ingredients needed to make explosives.

The judges stated: “We are satisfied that Naseer was an Al Qaeda operative who posed and still poses a threat to the national security of the United Kingdom and that, subject to the issue of safety on return, it is conducive to the public good that he should be deported.”

The court found Khan was radicalised after leaving home in Pakistan and became a “willing participant” in the plot.