HST274
Member
Talk about a loaded question! 
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Should terrorist religious fanatics be allowed to settle within the UK
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He's a citizen of somewhere else, otherwise this wouldn't be an issue.
He is only a citizen of the UK. He is not a citizen of another country, although it appears he "may be entitled to become a Gambian citizen".
That is why he is coming here.
You should also ask yourself why the UK and the US were relatively happy for Turkey to prosecute him and give him a lenient sentence, and not do it themselves. The US conveniently considers Aine Davis "not one of the four 'Beatles'". The answer is staring everyone in the thread right in the face.
Gloster
Established Member
Two quick points. Firstly, the idea that he could be deported to The Gambia seems to depend on him having close ties with the country, which seems to be assumed without much explanation. If the ties were indeed strong it probably would be quite easy to send him there, so why all this doubt?
Being that this appears in the Telegraph, could this be an attempt to win support for some of the government’s recent hostile behaviour? Maybe even to add to the Nationality & Borders Act, or just gain popular support for ‘the party that is nasty to foreigners’.
Being that this appears in the Telegraph, could this be an attempt to win support for some of the government’s recent hostile behaviour? Maybe even to add to the Nationality & Borders Act, or just gain popular support for ‘the party that is nasty to foreigners’.
He chose to join IS, so isn't the sort of person we should be allowing back into the country.
Why do you think he is being allowed back in with such little resistance?
I agree with the above suggestion that cases like this are worth bringing into the media and getting people all upset over (same with Shamima Begum), as if you're wanting to take away rights - you can't be seen to do this on 'law abiding citizens' so you create examples of why it's great to limit human rights etc, then once done you can apply to everyone.
Nobody can complain that they didn't see it coming either, although Brexit showed us that people didn't seem to realise that new restrictions on EU citizens could and would apply to us.
Nobody can complain that they didn't see it coming either, although Brexit showed us that people didn't seem to realise that new restrictions on EU citizens could and would apply to us.
If what you're insinuating is the case, then it should never have been allowed into the papers in the first place.
Oh but the government have an interest in showing how difficult it is to stop people like this coming into the country!
Well there are plenty of jihadis to make an example of.
Yes, he chose to join IS and yes, that makes him an undesirable. However he is a British citizen and so has the inviolate right to reside in the United Kingdom.
The Home Office may well be able to impose conditions that limit his movements, association and access to communications but, unless he is convicted of a crime they cannot imprison him, and unless he has an unconditional right to citizenship of another country they cannot strip him of his British citizenship.
This worries me a lot. The government could easily bring in some harsh new law supposedly aimed at terrorists, but then mainly apply it to others such as environmental / political activists or to simply deter a whole bunch of people from getting involved in things like protest movements because they are afraid they might be deported.
It would follow the same tactics used to frame the debate around all sorts of previous laws such as the current legislation to criminalise trespass, apparently aimed at gypsies - which is problematic in itself - but also liable to target protestors, wild campers, canoeists, van dwellers and homeless people.
It's unfortunate that some people are more convinced that our Government is trying to embed 5G chips in people in the form of a vaccine, or creating 'false flag' events when something terrible happens, and other nonsense - instead of seeing the quite simple changes, with a massive and possibly irreversible impact, that are being done in broad daylight - and often with full support of the people who will eventually suffer (a classic 'first they came for xxxx...' example).
This guy probably has the same handler as the *checks notes* former Royal Marine… working as… a “dog sanctuary owner”… in… Kabul! That everyone got in a mega flap about without realising he was the most screamingly obvious MI6 operative in the country.
So mysterious this man isn’t of interest *whatsoever* to the United States - who normally pursue terrorists to the ends of the earth - and the UK is only going through the motions of pretending to be offended he’s back. Why indeed, is he being treated differently, when Shamima Begum was stripped of citizenship under lesser circumstances?
Almost certainly this man has some sort of deal with the government having probably squealed a bunch of intel to the intelligence services, perhaps more.
So mysterious this man isn’t of interest *whatsoever* to the United States - who normally pursue terrorists to the ends of the earth - and the UK is only going through the motions of pretending to be offended he’s back. Why indeed, is he being treated differently, when Shamima Begum was stripped of citizenship under lesser circumstances?
Almost certainly this man has some sort of deal with the government having probably squealed a bunch of intel to the intelligence services, perhaps more.
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It’s not like he’s just going to be allowed back in with no checks, is it? You can bet that MI5 and Counter Terrorism Police will be keeping a very close watch.
TwoYellas
Member
I believe large sections of the media are also to blame for this distrust and confusion. Take this thread title for example, we get fed stories of IS terrorists i.e the latest news on Shamima Begum which gets wheeled out a few times a year; this then riles people up and causes division and hate in out society and I would guess a spike in hate crimes. Paradoxically I'd also think these stories will actually increase the risk of people being radicalised into far-right terror groups
The reporting is disproportionate in my view. If we had responsible, brave more constructive reporting I'd expect headlines to be more like:
"The war of aggression in Iraq which gave birth to the most vicious death cult since Nazism"
And
"Why do we support a barbaric religious fundamentalist dictatorship which murders and tortures it's own people and commits war crimes in Yemen creating the worst humanitarian disaster in the world"
It's just telling that this thread title is prominent here which to my mind is just the way irresponsible sections of the media lead people to think and ultimately all it does is cause harm. Not to say these stories should not be reported on, but should be reported in proportion to other much much bigger issues which are far more important to quell extremism and promote human rights.
It wouldn't surprise me at all if that's the case: even if he initially left to legitimately join IS, he well may have found out that the reality didn't match the expectation and looked for a way out.
That's fine in theory, but there are only so many people MI5 can keep tabs on at any given time.
DynamicSpirit
Established Member
That is just silly conspiracy-theory stuff. Almost no-one wants to take away rights from ordinary law-abiding citizens. There's a concern in some quarters (mainly on the political right) that terrorists and criminals are abusing the law to avoid justice, and there are moves to reform laws on human rights etc. to stop that happening, but it is targeted at those criminals and terrorists etc. - there really isn't some evil hidden agenda to use that as an excuse to target law-abiding citizens in the way you're suggesting.
Who determines what an ordinary, law abiding citizen is? As we saw with Begum, this seemed to be more related to satiating the blood lust of the right-wing tabloids. Who is to say who could be the next on that list, perhaps we could examine the genealogy of the High Court Judges that the Daily Mail deemed to be "Enemies of the People".
Quite simply, arbitrary decisions made for political expediency are no substitute to the rule of law.
With respect, that is patently false.
This government has taken rights away. Among others, I have lost my right to live and work in EU countries and my Italian, French and Spanish friends have lost their right to live in the UK. Yes, they have applied for settled status which gives them permission to live here, and yes I can apply for a visa if I need to but both I and they have lost rights. This was not an inevitable consequence of leaving the EU but rather a choice by the UK government to pursue a form of Brexit that resulted in that loss of rights.
The government is in the process of taking away rights with the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022. Yes, we will still be able to protest, but only if the Home Secretary decides that we aren't being disruptive.
The government has proposed to remove rights from us by threatening to withdraw from the ECHR and neuter the Supreme Court so that we lose the right to appeal to the court to decide if the Government is acting unlawfully.
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I'll be more relaxed when you can simply say no-one wants to take away rights from ordinary law-abiding citizens. When you add 'almost' it pretty much proves my point.
DynamicSpirit
Established Member
You're correct that the right to freedom of movement has been lost. But that's a totally separate issue from the issue we're discussing in this thread - which is the rights of terrorists etc. to live in the UK. The point I was making is that the concerns expressed about rights and ability of people like Aine Davis and Shamima Begum to live freely in the UK/etc. are just that: Concerns about terrorists/potential terrorists and public safety. I was replying to a post that seemed to be alleging that those concerns were somehow a smokescreen for a desire to deprive everyone else of their rights.
But those rights would in most cases, have no impact on ordinary law-abiding citizens: They only generally come into play if you are planning to do things like commit terrorist acts or public order offences (I suppose you could come up with edge cases where there might be some rare side-effect from the legislation, but that's not the primary intention).
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GusB
Established Member
That's all fine and dandy if you don't subscribe to the views that certain protesters may have, but by the time it comes for you to get upset about something that you do care about, it may be too late.
An ordinary law-abiding citizen is only such as long as they don't break any laws; if the government of the day introduces laws that make it a criminal offence to do something because it might irritate someone and you happen to fall foul of it, you are no longer a law-abiding citizen!
So removing his British citizenship would make him stateless unless his right to Gambian citizenship is automatic and unqualified (and even then, presumably subject to his actual applying).
I can’t help feeling that we’re probably safer with him knowing where he is and what he’s doing. There’s always the risk that if he returns to Gambia, he might disappear off the radar and be a danger to British tourists and business interests given that any sense of grievance he had will probably have been doubled now.
The trouble is that the nature of 21st century terrorism has meant changes to Western ideas of due process, which were found to be inadequate. The whole problem with Guantanamo was that Western governments hadn’t previously considered it necessary to legislate against citizens going abroad to engage in terrorism, particularly when they were working in a country which didn’t have a functioning government. So we have to qualify things like the presumption of innocence and people’s right to go about their business without state interference because nobody wants to stand up after another 7/7 and say that they were the ones who put a known terrorist’s perceived rights ahead of people’s lives.
GusB
Established Member
If he does come back here, I very much doubt that he'll be entirely free anyway - if there's any doubt about his activities he'll very much be "on the radar".
Lloyds siding
Member
Over the years I've known terrorist religious extremists, rapists, drug dealers, child molesters...all of them (with the exception of the terrorists) have been convicted, served their time, and are now out on the streets of Britain (I have a wide selection of acquaintances). The government has not decided (so far) that they should be locked up further. When it comes to terrorist religious fanatics...do you have to be all three to get locked up for life/refused citizenship of your own country? Or is a religious fanatic enough? Or a fanatical terrorist?
First they took the right of free movement/residence, and I said nothing. Then they took the right to protest, and I said nothing. Then they took my liberty, but there was nobody to say anything and nothing they were allowed to say...
DynamicSpirit
Established Member
That looks like you've tried to adapt Martin Niemöller's famous 'First They Came' confessional about not speaking out when the Nazi's successively persecuted certain groups.
But surely you're not comparing loss of EU freedom of movement to persecution?
Your second point looks to me to be based on an outright falsehood since we have self-evidently not lost our right to protest (as evidenced for example by the frequency with which you and others protest against the Government on these very forums, or by the go-slow protest against fuel duties that is taking place today as I write this on some motorways).
Your third point looks to me like pure scaremongering since (unless there is something unusual about your life that I'm not aware of) no-one is proposing to take away your liberty.
I believe you are correct on that point. According to The Times (https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/isis-beatle-aine-davis-will-be-returned-to-britain-rbttrqqg3)
TheTimes said:
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