Another new year, and another controversial human rights victory for a criminal. Fuad Awale was a violent thug and Islamist serving a life sentence for drug-related murder. In 2013, he took a prison officer hostage in an attempt to force the release of Islamic hate preacher Abu Qatada. After this episode he was moved to a close supervision centre, a unit meant to contain fanatical prisoners like him. There, his rights of association with other prisoners were understandably severely restricted, particularly as regards other Islamists (he had asked, for example, to chum up with the Islamic fanatics who had murdered Private Lee Rigby, a request that did not go down well). The result was that he spent a great deal of time on his own. 

In 2024 Awale sued the Home Office over this. He won, partly on a technicality (which does not concern us here), but also on the basis that his right to a private life under Article 8 of the ECHR had been infringed because he had not been given sufficient opportunity to associate with other convicts. On New Year’s day, David Lammy revealed that the Home Office had paid him £7,500 for the distress he had suffered, as well as paying his very considerable legal costs.

There is little doubt that in law........

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