BOTH Tony Blair and David Cameron blame the 1998 Human Rights Act which is enshrined in the 1950 European Convention of Human Rights for providing the Afghan hijackers with a legal basis to avoid deportation.
There is nothing in Britain's Human Rights legislation that says convicted hijackers cannot be deported, or that freedom of expression means that prisoners be allowed pornography, or that travellers be allowed to settle on green belt land.
The European convention The Human Rights Act did not (as the Sun' implies) originate from the European Union, but was drawn up by the Council of Europe, an institution set up after the Second World War in response to the horrors of Nazism and Stalinism.
Its founding father was Winston Churchill and the Treaty was signed in London.
The Treaty says clearly that some freedoms are suspended in the event of lawful detention after conviction by a competent court in the interests of national security.
The release of the hijackers, therefore, was a case of bad lawyers, not bad law.
The Human Rights Act has protected countless people and rescued a number of those wrongfully imprisoned.
It is a myth that the Act empowers criminals at our expense.
In fact it protects we citizens from abuse by the state.
In short it is there for us, and should not be scrapped for the convenience of politicians.
M COLEMAN.
Swindon
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