The court sits 24 hours a day? To which office or court do you lodge an appeal at 11pm at night?

Yes, that had occured to me. I'd be very surprised if any European institution worked outside the core 10.00 to 3.30 day, with lunch from 11.30 to 2.30.

More seriously though, in the UK at least if a document is required to be served on the 17th it would typically need to be hand delivered in office hours on the day before - there are detailed Civil Prodecure Rules about such thing.

Time generally is a funny thing in law. Deadlines aren't generally binding in contracts without some magic legal wording making the time "of the essence". It's a lot more difficult in European law because there is no European-wide common law which tends to decide most of these things, and of course the legislation is simultaneously written in umpteen different languages, all of which are authoritative.

A ruling from a court should be crystal clear and not open to interpretation. There was an article in The Times this week commenting on the inexperience and poor quality of some of the judges that sit in this court.

I think UKIP have had a good week!

And Nigel Farage has a very good point. I make no secret of my enormous support for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and obviously I very much approve of some of the European legislation protecting consumer rights, but cases such as this make a monkey out of those rights and the European institutions don't come out of it looking good. But then enither does the UK government.

Court decisions are always clear, the essential problem, if it is indeed a problem, is that legislation can never be entirely clear and the role of the court is always to interpert.

Given what I have seen, I'd say the court decision was not clear. That is obvious by the issue at hand. The meaning of a month is ambiguous. The court should have stated no later than midnight of a certain date, or before midnight of a certain date.

As for the human rights issue, I see this as simply the various governments failing to come up to speed and failing to invest all that is necessary for a slicker legal process.

The daft thing about this is that Abu Qatada's lawyers decided on a last-minute appeal (which may or may not be allowed) when he was arrested. If the Home Office had waited one more day before arresting him, there would probably have been no appeal within whichever deadline you choose.

Strasbourg’s Grand Chamber.

Be prepared to be surprised - the appeal was given to the Court at 11.00pm - one hour before the [alledged] deadline of midnight.

The completely daft thing about this is that AQ won the 17 January decision so it is unlikely that he has any grounds to appeal it, it's simply an abuse of process designed to delay his deportation.

The three month time limit for appeals wasn't part of the court decision, it comes from Article 43.1 of the European Convention on Human Rights.


The ambiguity is in the legislation because Article 43.1 gives the perp "three months from the date" to appeal, and three months from the 17th January is the 17th of April, but Article 44.2( says the judgment stands


And three months after the judgement is also the 17th April, so the legislation is self-contradictory.



Yes.

So it's poor quality ECHR judges is it?

Funny that, because at the original hearing AQ's team actually asked the Court when the deadline was. The court replied, and the appeal was subsequently put in. What's inexperienced about that?

He is just taking the p**s out of a system that has kept him and his family for umpteen years, a system he is avowed to destroy. Stop mucking about and just ship him out. If he was a Brit wanted by the USA his feet would not have touched the ground; he would have gone a long time ago! The French did not have any qualms about shipping out undesirables either.

At last. Someone who knows all about it. Excellent, you'll be the best person to fill in some of the blanks then. Could you cite a reference to anywhere where he says he wants to 'destroy our system'? Of the years he's been in this country, could you tell us how many of those he was banged up inside without charges for? And could you also tell us for how long the extradition treaties between us and the U.S.A. and us and Jordan have been identical? Can you explain your reference to the French, since they won't extradite any of their citizens at all, and they won't extradite anybody else's citizens to a country with the death penalty. So what in particular are you talking about?

To answer part of your question - France extradited someone to Rwanda this year and a leader of Panama was sent back home also. Okay, I except these are not citizens, as someone born and bred in France, just as Quatada is not British.

So the point is made, France won't extradite to where there is the death penalty. As for the Rwanda case, are you sure he's been extradited yet?

In the Noriega case, he had already been been sentenced by a French court to 7 years imprisonment, and said that he actually wanted to go back to Panama.

The court only approved the extridition to Rwanda a few weeks ago. I understand your questions but not sure of your motive/reasoning. Are you trying to understand the case better or defending Quatanda?

Quatanda? Is that like four pandas? Please say it ain't so.