Revealed: The terrorists we’re not allowed to deport: Foreign extremists reside freely in Britain because of European human rights legal guidelines

Foreign terrorists including a machine gun killer and mass-murder fanatics are living freely in Britain thanks to European human rights laws, the Mail can reveal.

Despite committing barbaric atrocities, the extremists cannot be deported in case they would face hardships in their home countries.

One who sprayed bullets into a London hotel lobby was spotted out shopping this week, while others who helped fanatics bent on attacking scores of commuters were able to stroll through the same leafy neighbourhoods they can call home.

The Mail examined the cases of five men born abroad who committed terror offences in Britain.

Yet repeated efforts to deport them after completing their prison sentences have failed because of European laws.

It comes as the issue of whether Britain should leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) has become a clear dividing line in the Conservative Party leadership contest, for which voting closes next week.

Former immigration minister Robert Jenrick has made leaving the ECHR a key pledge, saying the party will ‘die’ unless it does so.

His rival Kemi Badenoch told the Mail this week that while she agreed in principle on the ‘need to leave’, she insisted other countries found it easier to operate under the ECHR than Britain, adding: ‘It’s a judgment thing, more than an ECHR thing.’

Last night Mr Jenrick said: ‘These sick and evil men are still in our country, endangering the public, because the ECHR prevents their removal.

‘The noble document we signed up to 70 years ago has been bent and twisted out of all recognition by activist judges in Strasbourg. It’s now a criminals’ charter.

‘The only way we will end the madness is by leaving.’

Among the cases examined by the Mail this week is that of Fahad Mihyi, a Palestinian killer who attacked guests at a London hotel with hand grenades and a machine gun in 1978.

Another is Wahbi Mohammed, from Somalia, who was jailed for his part in the 2005 21/7 terror attack in London, two weeks after the 7/7 attack which killed 52 people.

The Home Office has repeatedly tried to deport him to Somalia but his lawyers have successfully argued it would breach his rights under the ECHR, saying he might be tortured in his homeland.

The same twisted ‘logic’ applies to another of the 21/7 fanatics, Ismail Abdurahman, who supposedly could be ‘mistreated’ by the authorities in Somalia.

Despite leaving the EU, British courts remain bound by ECHR judges who sit in Strasbourg.

Successive home secretaries have been frustrated at their inability to kick out foreign criminals once they have finished their jail terms.

In another farcical twist yesterday, Algerian terrorist Mourad Mosdefaoui, who is living in Edinburgh, told the Mail he ‘wished’ he could be deported to his home country, but claimed Algeria had three times refused to give him a passport.

The five men investigated by the Mail have all been the subject of failed attempts by Home Office officials to remove them from the UK, it is understood.

A Whitehall source said: ‘These terrorists are impossible for us to deal with under the ECHR.

‘Normally we would deport them, but judges interpret their rights under the ECHR as absolute – a right to be protected from poor treatment in their home countries or a right to stay with their family in the UK. So instead we have to monitor them for ever.’

The source added: ‘Somalian terrorists like Abdurahman should not be free to live in the UK after they get out of jail.’

The Mail understands that in some cases – including those involving foreign nationals convicted of terrorism – the Home Office has not even attempted to challenge human rights claims in the courts because the likelihood of success is so low.

The Conservatives first pledged human rights reform when in opposition under leader David Cameron in 2007, but despite years of promises there was little or no action.

Former Tory justice secretary Dominic Raab, who had campaigned on the issue for

years, published a Bill of Rights in June 2022 which would have made clear that the UK’s Supreme Court, rather than the European Court of Human Rights, was the ultimate decision-maker on human rights issues.

But its passage through Parliament was halted a few months later by Liz Truss when she was prime minister, and was subsequently dropped in June last year by her successor Rishi Sunak.

Human rights laws were one of the main reasons behind the Supreme Court blocking the previous government’s Rwanda asylum scheme.

The Conservatives had to pass further legislation and secure a new treaty with Rwanda in the wake of the ruling.

That process was completed, but no deportation flights took place before ex-PM Rishi Sunak called the general election.

Labour then scrapped the whole Rwanda programme but EU nations are now discussing launching their own copycat schemes.