Treason trials
by Paul Goodman, Conservative Home:
[…] Policy Exchange’s suggestion that a modernised treason law should be used to prosecute jihadis provides a rare example of public opinion and establishment views being aligned. We admit to having no polling evidence to prove the point, but hazard that many voters wouldn’t hesitate for a moment before backing treason trials in Britain for Islamist terrorists. They would wonder what all the fuss is about. (Though in the case of the ISIS fanatics in question we suspect that they would be happy with extradition to the United States.)
Which takes us to the appointment of Max Hill as the new Director of Public Prosecutions (for which moment Policy Exchange appears to have held back its report).
One of David Cameron’s achievements in office was to brook no nonsense about the connection between Islamist extremism and Islamist terror. His view, re-stated recently abroad and reported by this site, is that Islam is a great religion, but Islamism a dangerous ideology – a distorted version of one of the three great monotheistic faiths, though one with roots that reach back almost to Mohammed’s own time. Once in office, he called this spade a spade, and set about depriving Islamist groups of public money, Government patronage and shared platforms with Ministers.
This view now stretches across the political spectrum to form a consensus from the Tory right through the political centre to the old left – that’s to say, the bit of it that prioritises, say, womens’ rights above political correctness.
However, it may not yet have have reached Hill. He is on record as calling for some returning jihadis not to be prosecuted, criticising plans for prosecuting followers of online hate preachers, and suggesting shorter sentences for some terror offenders. In his former post as the reviewer of independent terror legislation, he also met with Cage, whose research director, Asim Qureshi, described Mohammed Emwazi, a.ka. Jihadi John, as a “beautiful young man.” He has also contested the description of jihadis as “Islamist”.
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