The terrorist who claimed asylum

In yet another migration and security scandal that will infuriate much of the British public, it has recently emerged that a convicted Islamist terrorist has been allowed to remain in the UK on human-rights grounds.

Shah Rahman is a Bangladeshi-born terrorist who, in 2012, was convicted along with four others for planning to blow up the London Stock Exchange. Al-Qaeda, originally led and inspired by Osama Bin Laden, was behind the attack. Others who were implicated in this plot included Usman Khan (also known as Abu Saif), a man later presented as a poster boy for deradicalisation before he murdered 25-year-old Jack Merritt and 23-year-old Saskia Jones in London Bridge in 2019.

Rahman was released on license after serving five years in prison in 2017, submitting an asylum claim the same year. His application, as you would expect, was rejected. But the story didn’t end there. Rahman was allowed to remain in Britain after a judge overruled the initial decision, finding that deporting the convicted terrorist would be a breach of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) – specifically Article 3, which prohibits ‘inhuman or degrading punishment’. Rahman successfully argued that, should he be deported back to his own country, he would face such treatment.

This case and many others show that the UK’s human-rights framework is not fit for purpose. It all too often prioritises the individual rights of foreign nationals – even convicted Islamist terrorists – over the collective security of the law-abiding British public. Drug dealers and sex offenders have also been allowed to remain in the UK on equally spurious grounds. And the British public pays the price.

No sane person thinks that a terrorist’s safety in their ancestral homeland – and we are simply taking their word for it that they are at risk – is as important as the welfare of British citizens. It is high time that the UK’s human-rights system were radically overhauled. Britain is now seen – even by a string of Muslim-majority countries – as a soft touch on Islamist extremism.

A terrorist like Shah Rahman should never have been considered for asylum in the first place. That his claim was successful ought to produce some serious soul-searching among the British establishment. Although I won’t hold my breath.

Rakib Ehsan is the author of Beyond Grievance: What the Left Gets Wrong about Ethnic Minorities, which is available to order on Amazon.