But of much greater consequence than this one case is the current practice of charging people with minor and newly created offences such as arriving without papers/with a false passport, imprisoning people and then deporting them, often to dangerous countries. It’s hard to imagine a way of getting more people deported than by making refusal the automatic presumption in asylum applications. But in inventing spurious reasons for refusing to listen to the cases in the first place, the government has found a way.

“Quite irrespective of what might be said by the Parole Board in this case, we have to come to the conclusions on the evidence and the law as it is before us as of today.”

The Parole Board, of course, will consider this in a few months time, not last March, which is probably what they’re getting at - obviously if he dismembers ten warders and burns down E Wing he might not get such a glowing set of reports come parole time.

By the way, I do urge everyone to read the ruling in full, since that will mark you out as a better informed than nearly every journalist on the planet - the Home Office barrister won a lot of rounds on points, as it happens.

If you look at Unity’s other post, on what the Mail aren’t telling people, you’ll see the evidence. I think one of the people best qualified to talk about whether Chindamo should be considered for parole is the Deputy Governor responsible for Chindamo. Funnily enough, he has spoken in Chindamo’s favour.

Blackstone’s formulation is that it’s better that ten guilty people should go free than one innocent person should suffer. Ben Franklin gave the ratio as a hundred to one, but he doesn’t have the same standing in English legal history.

I would add that there’s no such thing as British law in this case. Scottish law provides for ‘not proven’ as a verdict.

As to your other comments - could you restate them more clearly? I don’t understand what you’re trying to say.

From the public prints I suspect there is none.

And for the general comment -

I do not support the general feelimg that we should have Capital Punishment.

The reason that I am anti capital punishment is simple

A jury has to make a decision on the evidence submitted. To convict, as British Law requires, that decision of the jury must be beyond a reasonable doubt

You are left, as a Jury, with an unobjective Decision. And I fear that many an “Erbert” has been aquited as should havw been Found guilty.

It is as great a misplacemnt of justice for the guilty to be aquitted as it is for the innocent to be convicted.

I think that the law should not discrimenate.

Those that are released with an entitlemnt to British Pasports should follow their passports.

Those who do time for major crimes who do not posses non British Loyalties
should follow thier passports. - As did Lord Haw Haw. ( AKA William Joyce )

Irish Birth, Facist, British Passport, American Citizenship.Gallows Wandsworth. Not regreted !!!

A substantial segment of the population just isn’t prepared to accept that an individual, having committed a crime such as this, could be reintegrated into society. To them, it appears, an evil act is an indicator of an evil person.

Which is precisely why we have, and should value, a criminal justice system that deals in material facts and objective judgements on sentencing rather than ignorance, prejudice and the rule of the mob.

A substantial segment of the population just isn’t prepared to accept that an individual, having committed a crime such as this, could be reintegrated into society. To them, it appears, an evil act is an indicator of an evil person.

Should you need evidence for this assertion of mine, just have a browse through the comments on Guardian CiF following any of the several columns on this case in the past couple of days.

Ian

Unless that changes (which I can’t see), we’re going to have this same debate every few weeks.

That he should be consider a risk precisely because of the very hysteria that the Mail and others are stirring up at present is, to say the least, a sad reflection on state of British society, not to mention some of the most reprehensible legal sophistry I’ve seen in a long time.

To Quote Orwell -” Just because its reported in the Daily Telegraph does not mean its untrue”.

Although I may agree with you that the Human Rights Convention has no bearing on this and should not be abolished.