Stephen Nulty 8:11 pm on July 23, 2018
Tags: Aine Davis, Alexanda Kotey, death penalty, El Shafee Elsheikh, Mohammed Emwazi, sajid javid,   

Monday 23 July 2018 – What is the point of principles if the Government can ignore them when its is politically expedient?

Defending the rights of Islamic State suspects is clearly not going not going to be popular but the United Kingdom has had a long-standing principle since it abolished the death penalty in the 1960s that our Government and courts do not extradite people to another country if they could face the death penalty.  This does not mean our Government will not extradite those people, but that it will only do so if an assurance is reached with the country in question that those extradited will not face the death penalty.  Today, the Government of Theresa May has decided  not to seek this reassurance from the United States should the British courts extradite two IS suspects who were captured in Syria.  The two men, Alexanda Kotey and El Shafee Elsheik are both from London and are accused of being members of the so-called “Beatles” group of IS members who killed Western hostages.

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Photos Alexanda Kotey and El Shafee Elsheik

Bizarrely the UK Government has said that it won’t oppose the men being put to death if they are convicted in the United States, but opposes them being sent to Guantanamo Bay and would possibly withhold intelligence from the United States if the two men are sent to the military base in Cuba.   It seems that the British Government is trying to wash its hands of these men, having already stripped them of their British citizenship.  Furthermore, according to the Telegraph, the UK Government has agreed to hand over intelligence related to the two men to the United States, but that the Home Secretary Sajid Javid has wrote to the US Secretary of State Jeff Sessions to say that Britain will not demand assurances that the pair will not be executed.  In his letter, written on 22 June, Mr Javid also said: “I am of the view that there are strong reasons for not requiring a death penalty assurance in this specific case, so no such assurances will be sought.”


This suggests that a deal has been reached between the US administration and the British Government, but the Britain Prime Minister, Theresa May, again according to the Telegraph, has not so far backed Mr Javid’s claims.  Downing Street simply said that the UK’s “long-standing position [was] to oppose the death penalty in all circumstances as a matter of principle,” but failed to say whether Mrs May supported the decision.  This beggars the question, what are principles for if they are ignored when politically expedient?  I suspect that Mrs May is hedging her bets and is keeping personally quiet and waiting to see the reaction before saying whether or not she supports the decision. The PM’s spokesman said, when asked directly whether she supported the decision by Mr Javid, “Everybody agrees that these men should face justice through a criminal prosecution.”  Meaningless and stating the obvious.  If the Government was so concerned that the men should face prosecution, they shouldn’t have stripped them of their citizenship and had them tried in the UK as UK citizens.  The spokesman added that “there was no contradiction between the Government’s opposition to the death penalty and Mr Javid’s decision not to seek an assurance against execution.”


The decision was also made by the former Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, and the PM’s spokesman said: “The decision was taken by the Home Secretary and the former foreign secretary and the PM was made aware of the decision but I would say it is everyone’s aim to make sure that these men face justice through a criminal prosecution.”  Mr Johnson resigned as Foreign Secretary recently due to his opposition to the Prime Minister’s Brexit plan.


That, however, is more than likely the one thing that the UK Government is hoping to avoid.  It is notoriously difficult in the UK to prosecute IS suspects and cases can drag on for years with problems of finding evidence, witnesses and even establishing what crimes have been committed.  The Government fears not only a long, drawn-out trial, but the possibility that they will not be convicted and will be released into society.  The UK Government believes that it will be easier to prosecute the men successfully in the US where laws are different and where some additional anti-terror laws are available which are not available in the UK.  Again this is breaching British legal principles because it is politically expedient.  We have already denied the men their British citizenship now the Government intends to deprive them of British justice. 


Stripping the men of their citizenship was ruled as a breach of international law as stripping citizens who do not have dual-citizenship of their only citizenship opens them up to rendition and torture.  It has also been suggested previously that the Government was considering agreeing for the men to be sent to Guantanamo Bay, which would mean they would face indefinite detention without a trial.  If convicted in the US and sentenced to life in prison they would probably be detained at the Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado which isn’t exactly a human place of incarceration with 23 hours a day spent in cells, virtually no human contact, and short exercise periods.  A third option was for them to be tried at the International Court in The Hague, where they would not face the death penalty.  It seems that the UK Government is choosing to US trial option.


Speaking in the House of Commons today the Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott pointed out that it was not possible to be “a little bit in favour of the death penalty” and described the decision as “abhorrent and shameful.”  She called on ministers to reverse the decision “even at this late stage.”  Responding to her call, Conservative MP Ben Wallace said: “The crimes that we are talking about involve the beheading and videoing of those beheadings of dozens of innocent people by one of the most abhorrent organisations walking this Earth. And simply to say if we were unable to prosecute them in this country, that we should simply let them free to roam around the United Kingdom […] is simply bizarre and not justice to the victims.”


Mr Wallace’s comments again contradict the principle of British legal justice – if someone is found not guilty then they are not guilty and the Government have no right to detain them.  Mr Wallace seems to doubt the case against the two men but is prepared to see them convicted and executed in the United States, presumably using the same evidence a British court could bring to bear.  This whole decision seems to follow this principle and seems to suggest that the US legal system is less rigorous in its judicial process.  Mr Wallace also said that ministers had complied with the European Convention on Human Rights and international law in relation to the cases of the two IS suspects.


As someone who is vehemently opposed to the death penalty in any circumstance, the worrying thing about this decision is that it demonstrates that there are ministers in the current Government who clearly do not oppose the death penalty – at least in some extreme circumstances.  As a member of the European Union we are obliged to have no death penalty but there has always been a substantial section of society who would support its reinstatement.  Once we leave the EU, and assuming we ditch the European Human Rights act as seems likely, there will be nothing stopping a future UK Government from trying to bring back the death penalty. It is not inconceivable that the Government is using the case of these two men as a gauge to judge public and political opinion on the subject.


Alexanda Kotey and El Shafee Elsheikh were two of four IS members who became part of a small cell nicknamed “The Beatles” by their hostages.  The other two men were Mohammed Emwazi (who was nicknamed “Jihadi John”) and Aine Davis.  All four men were from London and all were radicalised in the UK before going to Syria.  They are said to have beheaded more than 27 Western hostages and tortured many more. Emwazi, who was thought to be the ringleader of the group, was killed by a drone strike in 2015 and Davis was convicted in Turkey for being a member of Islamic State and was jailed in that country.  Three of the four men were born in the UK, while Elsheikh was born in Sudan and came to the UK as a child later becoming a British citizen.  Among their victims were US journalists James Foley and Steven  Sotloff, British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning and US humanitarian worker Peter Kassig.


Amnesty International UK’s head of advocacy and programmes, Allan Hogarth, called the decision “deeply worrying” adding: “The Home Secretary must unequivocally insist that Britain’s long-standing position on the death penalty has not changed and seek cast iron assurances from the US that it will not be used. While the alleged crimes of Alexanda Kotey and Shafee El-Sheikh are appalling, the UK’s principled opposition to the cruelty of the death penalty isn’t something it should compromise.”  Mr Hogarth added: “A failure to seek assurances on this case seriously jeopardises the UK’s position as a strong advocate for the abolition of the death penalty, and its work encouraging others to abolish the cruel, inhuman and degrading practice. At a time when the rest of the world is moving increasingly to abolition, this reported letter marks a huge backward step. By refusing to seek assurances on this case, the home secretary is leaving the door wide open to charges of hypocrisy and double standards.”


Executing these men may be politically expedient to the US and UK but in reality it will give them exactly what IS want – to make them martyrs in their obscene ideology.  Nicolas Henin, who was a French journalist tortured by the terror cell known as “The Beatles”  suggested that Kotey and Elsheikh should face a trial and not be sent to Guantanamo Bay or executed.  He told The Independent that the UK Government shouldn’t give in to public pressure and that the men should face a fair trial.  He added that executing the men would be “short-sighted” adding: “Of course the public must be protected from the risk these people pose, they must be neutralised. But they also must be neutralised in a proper manner, or it will be further recruitment [for Isis], and if it makes other people revolted by their treatment then it is eventually counterproductive.”  He argued that the men “love death” and were seeking to be martyred, suggesting: “The basic principle in war is that you will never give your enemy satisfaction. If they want to die you should not give them that.”


Mr Henin said that the families of their American victims were “very active” in lobbying for a trial and against them being sent to Guantanamo Bay.  He said: “There must be a trial. For me it’s totally fine to kill them on the battlefield, it is the reality of war, but after a trial and the judicial process I object to it […]  it’s not acceptable to mimic your enemy.”


Diane Foley, the mother of James Foley, the American journalist beheaded by the terror cell, told the BBC’s Radio 4 Today programme: ““I feel it’s very important that they be tried in an open, transparent way so that all can know the crime they’ve committed and anyone else they might implicate, because it certainly wasn’t just them. I am very against the death penalty, I think that would just make them martyrs in their twisted ideology […] I feel that’s easy for them. I would like them to be held accountable by being sent to prison for the rest of their lives.”  She argued that her son “always wanted justice in the fairest sense” and would have felt the same as her.


Lord Carlile, the former independent reviewer of terrorism legislation in the UK, described the Mr Javid decision as “extraordinary,” adding: “They should not be given the opportunity of being turned into martyrs, but the home secretary extraordinarily is trying to change British policy without any consultation with parliament. It flies in the face of what has been said repeatedly and recently by the Home Office […] Britain has always said that it will pass information and intelligence in appropriate cases, provided there is no death penalty. That is a decades-old policy and is not for the home secretary to change it.”  He was also speaking to Radio 4’s Today programme.


The Shadow Attorney General, Shami Chakrabarti, told The Independent: “[The Home Secretary] appears to have secretly and unilaterally abandoned Britain’s opposition to the death penalty. By doing so he is not just playing with the lives of these particular terrorists but of those other Britons – including potentially innocent ones – all over the world. Just as we should be persuading countries like the US and Iran to drop the death penalty, Mr Javid appears to be encouraging this grave human rights abuse.”

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