Conservative Party leadership candidate Robert Jenrick seems to have put his foot in it with his latest scaremongering video.
Jenrick: we kill suspects to avoid the ECHR
Declassified journalist Matt Kennard said Jenrick was “casually revealing a UK extra-judicial assassination program designed to evade ECHR jurisdiction”. In his video, the apparent frontrunner in the Tory leadership race admitted:
Our special forces are killing, rather than capturing, terrorists because our lawyers tell us that, if they’re caught, the European court will set them free.
Fellow candidate James Cleverly said he wasn’t “comfortable repeating”. He added that “our military do not murder people”.
Jenrick claimed to be quoting fellow Tory Ben Wallace, though. Wallace had claimed in 2023 that “we are more often than not forced into taking lethal action than actually raiding and detaining”. He added that “we’ve been able to use drones and aircraft to make kinetic strikes against terror suspects”.
"Our special forces are killing rather than capturing terrorists because our lawyers tell us if they're caught, the European Court will set them free.”
Former Home Office minister casually revealing a UK extra-judicial assassination program designed to evade ECHR jurisdiction👇 https://t.co/i3o485xuRR
— Matt Kennard (@kennardmatt) September 30, 2024
Killing terrorists, or aiding them?
The big question is who gets to decide when an extra-judicial murder will happen? And who determines which groups or people should receive the ‘terrorist’ label? In Britain, explains the Crown Prosecution Service:
The Terrorism Act 2000 defines terrorism, both in and outside of the UK, as the use or threat of one or more of the actions listed below, and where they are designed to influence the government, or an international governmental organisation or to intimidate the public. The use or threat must also be for the purpose of advancing a political, religious, racial or ideological cause.
The specific actions included are:
- serious violence against a person;
- serious damage to property;
- endangering a person’s life (other than that of the person committing the action);
- creating a serious risk to the health or safety of the public or a section of the public; and
- action designed to seriously interfere with or seriously to disrupt an electronic system.
But this definition would seem implicate the state of Israel, a close UK ally. The colonial power has massacred thousands of children and other civilians in occupied Gaza and beyond. It has also destroyed or damaged “more than half of Gaza’s homes”, “85 percent of school buildings”, healthcare facilities, businesses, roads, and farmland.
Britain’s government still considers the terrorists in the Israeli occupation forces to be friends, though. That’s why the UK military is reportedly training Israeli occupation forces.
And Britain has not only allowed arms to enter Israel via UK airspace, but greenlit arms deals and supplied parts for Israeli jets, like the one responsible for bombing “the residential compound of a British medical charity in Gaza”. UK authorities, however, have arrested campaigners trying to stop factories complicit in war crimes under counter-terrorism laws.
Covert US flights, meanwhile, have left from RAF Akrotiri on Cyprus throughout Israel’s genocide in Gaza. And dozens of British warplanes have flown to both Israel and Lebanon. British spy flights have also been passing intelligence to Israel.
Terrorism, then, seems to be subjective. The official position seems to be that you can murder some, but you need to support others. And that’s not a position that Jenrick, or anyone else, should be proud of.
Featured image via the Canary
