Labour is facing fury after an Islamist double-killer used European human rights laws to claim £240,000 of taxpayers’ money after he whined about being put in solitary confinement as punishment for taking a prison guard hostage. The Mail has more.
In what has been branded a “sick joke” Fuad Awale was given the cash in compensation and costs by the High Court after he complained that a decision to place him in solitary confinement as punishment for taking a prison guard hostage left him “severely depressed”.
Awale is serving a life sentence for the ‘execution’ style killing of two men in 2011. He was transferred to a special separation unit for dangerous convicts two years later after he and another convict ambushed a jail worker and threatened to kill him.
He later used Article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) to claim his segregation – designed to prevent him harming officers and radicalising inmates – had breached his right to [private] life.
David Lammy, the Justice Secretary, has now agreed to pay £7,500 compensation and £234,000 legal costs after a High Court judge said there had been a “significant degree of interference with the claimant’s private life”.
Robert Jenrick, the Conservative Shadow Justice Secretary, who obtained details of the payout in a letter from Mr Lammy, branded the decision a “sick joke”.
He said: “Labour are cowing to terrorists and the human rights brigade. They must introduce emergency legislation to carve these monsters out of the ECHR immediately. If they don’t, we will as soon as Parliament returns.”
The court heard Awale previously asked to associate with one of the Islamic extremist killers of Fusilier Lee Rigby – but was denied the request due to “counter-terrorism concerns”.
He and an accomplice also demanded the release of Qatada, a hate preacher who had been facing deportation to Jordan to face terror charges, as well as Roshonara Choudhry, who stabbed Labour MP Stephen Timms in 2010.
The judge added: “The degree of interference with the claimant’s private life which has resulted from his removal from association has been of some significance and duration.”
Mr Lammy, who revealed the payout to Awale in a letter today, suggested Ministers were considering changes in the law to prevent extremist criminals from using the ECHR as a “barrier to us protecting national security”.
Awale was sentenced to a minimum of 38 years in prison in January 2013 aged 25 after shooting Mohammed Abdi Farah, 19, and Amin Ahmed Ismail, 18, in the head in a Milton Keynes alleyway over a drugs dispute.
He was handed a further six-year jail sentence after taking a prison officer hostage in 2013 and making threats to kill him.
The extremist had pointed a sharp implement at the throat of the officer, pinning him to a chair, and said: “Stop struggling, I’ve killed two people – I’ll kill you.”
Awale was subsequently assessed as having ‘extremist beliefs’ and held in ‘close supervision centres’ – where up to four officers with body-worn cameras ‘unlock’ inmates each time they leave their cells.
Awale was kept in HMP Woodhill, Milton Keynes, from 2021 onwards and did not associate with any other inmates since March 17th 2023, spending as little as one hour a day outside his cell.
Worth reading in full.
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