Britain mired in row over cleric's deportation

LONDON: Britain voiced its frustration Thursday at the legal tangle in the European Court of Human Rights preventing London from deporting a radical cleric, as it hosted talks on taming the court's powers.

Prime Minister David Cameron vowed to continue efforts to remove Abu Qatada to Jordan, despite the process being thrown into doubt by the Islamist's last-minute and apparently unexpected appeal to the Strasbourg court.

The opposition Labour Party called the situation a "farce".

It said the government was presiding over "confusion and chaos", while doubts over Abu Qatada's future increased the likelihood that he would be released from jail until they were resolved.

In a rowdy session in parliament's lower House of Commons, Home Secretary Theresa May said she still believed he could be deported.

Cameron said he wished he could take Abu Qatada to Jordan in person.

"The home secretary has made clear the issue over the timing, but the real issue is over the substance -- and that is that this man has no right to be in our country," he told reporters in Scotland.

"He is a danger to our country and we want to remove him from our country. However long it takes and however many difficulties there are, we will get him out.

"I sometimes wish I could put him on a plane and take him to Jordan myself. But government has to act within the law. That is what we'll do. We will get this done."

John Mitting, the judge at the centre of the row, said he could soon release Abu Qatada.

In a ruling posted on the Special Immigration Appeals' website, the judge said "if it is obvious after two or three weeks that deportation is not imminent", he would reconsider releasing Abu Qatada, albeit under strict conditions.

The situation threatened to overshadow the government's efforts to push through reforms of the European court at a conference of the 47 member nations held Thursday in the southern English coastal resort of Brighton.

Britain has been trying to deport Abu Qatada, who claimed asylum here in 1993, for more than six years, arguing that he is a threat to national security.

But his removal has repeatedly been blocked by the courts amid concerns about his treatment in Jordan, where the cleric was convicted in 1998, in his absence, of involvement in terror attacks. (AFP)