At last members of the jury, we have a decent judge!

Blackleaf

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As the 21/7 attempted bombers are sent down for a minimum of 40 years each Richard Littlejohn does something he isn't often able to do: praise a judge....

At last members of the jury, we have a decent judge!

12th July 2007
Daily Mail



RICHARD LITTLEJOHN


Over the past decade we have come to despair of Britain's judiciary.

The Men In Wigs seem to take an almost sexual delight in handing down soft sentences and perverse rulings.

The greater the public outrage, the more intense their frisson of excitement.

Barely a week goes by without a judge showing unwarranted leniency to some wicked criminal or other.

Known terrorists are freed to walk the streets under the most literal and contrary interpretations of 'yuman rites' law.

Labour's years in office have been marked by an avalanche of judicial activism. Of course, the politicians are largely to blame. They passed the laws, set the tone and appointed the judges.





But Britain's legal establishment is notorious for the lengths to which it goes to turn justice on its head, especially in terror cases.

The courts consistently refuse either to detain or deport those who make no secret of their intention to do us harm. Even if someone has been convicted of a heinous offence, the likelihood of them being returned to their home country where they could be in danger of harsh treatment, poor lambs, is less than zero.

Our European 'partners' seem to have little compunction about expelling foreign terrorists, even though they're all signatories to the same 'yuman rites' act.

But British judges won't countenance it. That would offend their sensitive, self-regarding 'liberal' consciences.

Rather than put Mustapha Jihad on the Night Boat to Cairo, they'd rather see him safely tucked up in a council house in the suburbs, with a pound from the poor box.

The rights of murderous maniacs always come before the safety of the British public.

Some days it seems as if every single one of our judges has been hired from the jobs pages of The Guardian. If there's a loophole which will save a terror suspect or paedophile from incarceration, Mr Justice Toynbee will drive a Toyota Prius straight through it.

Nowhere has the criticism of the Men In Wigs been fiercer than in this column. So credit where it's due.

This week we have seen the kind of exemplary performance from a judge which we thought had gone out with the gibbet.

Sentencing the four July 21 Islamist bombers to life imprisonment, Mr Justice Fulford ruled that they would have to serve at least 40 years. That was the maximum he was permitted to hand down, although he gave the strong impression that he hoped they would never be released.

I have no idea where he stands on capital punishment, but I suspect that if hanging, drawing and quartering had been available, Judge Fulford would have reached for the black cap.

His concise, compelling closing remarks reflected not just the enormity of the crime, but gave voice to the disgust and horror of the British public.

They deserve to be nailed to the door of every judge's chambers. Here are the edited highlights.

First he spelt out in graphic detail the carnage which would have occurred had the attacks not been bungled.

"It's clear that at least 50 people would have died. Hundreds would have been wounded. Thousands would have had their lives permanently damaged, disfigured or destroyed — be they Christian, Muslim, Jew, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, agnostic or atheist.

"The families and friends of the dead and injured; the hundreds, indeed thousands, captured in darkness underground in terrifying circumstances.

"The smoke, the fires, the screams of the wounded and the dying; this, each defendant knew. They planned this, they prepared for it. They spent many hours making viable bombs, or were aware others had this work under way."

In a stunning rebuke to the usual bunch of apologists who tried to suggest at the time that this was simply an incompetent attempt by a bunch of disillusioned, disaffected, misguided Muslim lads to recreate the 7/7 bombings, he had this to say: "These were not truly isolated events. On the contrary, they were to an extent co-ordinated and connected.

"I have no doubt that they were both part of an Al Qaeda-controlled and inspired sequence of incidents."

During the trial, it emerged that the ringleader had been to terror training camp in Pakistan. No doubt had he been picked up at the airport by the security services on his return to Britain, the idiot Guardianistas and the stage army of 'moderate' Muslims would have been queueing up to protest on the BBC that he had been to a 'family wedding' or had travelled to Pakistan to enrol on a 'computer studies course'.

Nor did the judge have any truck with those who blame British foreign policy for terror attacks in this country.

"The Iraq card was cynically played. The fanatical and murderous purpose underlining this conspiracy predated invasion.

"This planned attack on London formed part of a long-term desire by some to disrupt our society and to radicalise a part of the Muslim community.

"It was founded on a simple hatred by a tiny minority of our way of life and our civilisation as was demonstrated by the indiscriminate nature of the proposed attack."

Some of us have been arguing this for years, even before 9/11. We were smeared as 'racists' and 'Islamophobes'.

Even though the defendants may have been brainwashed by Mad Mullahs like Captain Hook, the judge said that was no excuse.

"I accept they may have been seduced into a fanatical, jihadist and extremely violent way of thinking by others who corrupt minds.

"However, the passing influence of others offers scant mitigation against the months the defendants had to reflect on the true impact of what they set out to achieve."

All this was tempered with compassion and understanding for those Muslim witnesses who came forward and hadn't been "swayed or deterred by a narrow and false sense of community loyalty".

Plenty has been written about the criminal negligence of the politicians and bureaucrats in this case, not least the casual award of citizenship and a British passport to someone with a serious criminal record.

The Funny People don't come out of it too well, either. But for once we can't complain about the response of the courts to those who wish to murder us and destroy our way of life.

Judge Fulford's address was in many ways the judicial equivalent of Col Tim Collins's famous speech to his men before they went into battle in Iraq.

It's a pity our courts aren't televised so we can see justice being done. This deserved a primetime audience.

I've long since argued in this column that we will get judges who reflect public concerns and common decency only when we make them stand for election.

If that day ever comes, Judge Fulford gets my vote. While we've got men like him on the bench, we're still in with a chance.

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