UK Court Awards £240,000 to Islamist Prisoner After ECHR Breach
Fuad Awale, a convicted killer, successfully challenged his segregation in a high-security prison, arguing that his confinement caused “severe depression.”
Fuad Awale, a convicted killer, successfully challenged his segregation in a high-security prison, arguing that his confinement caused “severe depression.”
A British court has awarded a total of £240,000 in taxpayer-funded compensation and legal costs to Fuad Awale, a convicted Islamist double murderer, after ruling that his treatment in prison breached his rights under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
Justice Secretary David Lammy agreed to pay £7,500 in compensation and cover £234,000 in legal fees following a High Court judgment which found that Awale’s long-term segregation from other inmates violated his right to a private life under Article 8 of the ECHR. The separation regime was imposed after Awale and another inmate took a prison officer hostage in 2013, threatening to kill him unless the UK released extremist hate preacher Abu Qatada.
Awale argued that his confinement in a high-security separation unit caused “severe depression” due to lack of association with other prisoners. The court heard that he had requested contact with another Islamist extremist killer but was refused on counter-terrorism grounds.
Awale is serving a life sentence for the 2011 killings of two men, whom a judge said were deliberately shot in the head in a planned execution. Sentenced in January 2013, he received a minimum term of 38 years after murdering Mohammed Abdi Farah, 19, and Amin Ahmed Ismail, 18, in an alleyway in Milton Keynes following a drugs-related dispute.
The case has reignited criticism of the ECHR and its impact on Britain’s justice and security systems. Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick warned that the ruling could lead to similar claims by dangerous prisoners and limit the ability of prison authorities to safely manage extremist offenders.
“This is the reality of the ECHR: it prioritises the ‘rights’ of terrorists to associate with other extremists over the safety of our prison officers” he said.
The Awale case ruling is one of the recent cases that have intensified scrutiny of the ECHR. In another ridiculous decision, an Albanian criminal avoided deportation after a tribunal ruled it would be “unduly harsh” for his child to move abroad, citing the child’s aversion to foreign chicken nuggets. The case was heard under the previous Conservative government, but remains a damning indictment of Labour’s supposed efforts to clamp down on illegal border crossings.
Debate has also been fuelled by comments from Mary-Ann Stephenson, the newly appointed chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission. In her first interviews, she urged politicians and the media to stop what she described as “demonising” migrants and rejected calls for the UK to withdraw from the ECHR, despite growing political support for leaving the convention. Reform UK, currently leading in the polls, has pledged to withdraw from the convention, arguing it enables activist lawyers to prevent the deportation of dangerous migrants.
Concerns over the ECHR have extended to national security. Lawyers acting for Hamas have submitted a legal action arguing that the group’s proscription as a terrorist organisation breaches Hamas supporters’ human rights under the ECHR by “unlawfully restricting” their freedom of speech.
Political scientist and commentator Matthew Goodwin warned that rather than “keeping us safe,” the convention is “now consistently used by illegal migrants, foreign criminals and terrorists to undermine the safety and security of the British people.”
