From the Daily Mail:

Radical preacher Abu Qatada was today awarded compensation of £2,500 by judges, who ruled that his detention without trial breached his human rights.
Qatada, often described as Osama Bin Laden’s ambassador in Europe, had demanded tens of thousands for being unlawfully held in Belmarsh prison.
Ten other terror suspects today received similar levels of compensation from the European Court of Human Rights – which were lower than feared.
The judges said they had made the awards ’substantially lower’ than those handed out in previous cases of unlawful detention.
This was ‘in view of the fact that the detention scheme (the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001) was devised in the face of a public emergency, and as an attempt to reconcile the need to protect the UK public against terrorism with the obligation not to send the applicants back to countries where they faced a real risk of ill-treatment’.
Today’s victory came after Qatada claimed that his detention under anti-terror laws introduced by the Government after the 2001 attacks on America violated the Human Rights Convention.
Today’s ruling acknowledged that at the time of the detentions, ‘there had been a public emergency threatening the life of the nation’.
But it said the issue was whether the legal measures adopted by the Government in response were ’strictly required by the exigencies of the situation’.
The judges said when someone is detained on the basis of ‘an allegedly reasonable suspicion of unlawful behaviour’, that person must be given an opportunity effectively to challenge the allegations.
At the time the Government considered there was an urgent need to protect the UK population from terrorist attack and a strong public interest in obtaining information about al-Qaida and its associates, and keeping the sources of such information secret.
But balanced against that, went on the judges, was the detainees’ rights to ‘procedural fairness’.
Yesterday the preacher lost the latest round of his UK legal battle to stay in Britain.
Critics had branded the human rights case yet another example of human rights and European law madness.
They pointed out that the men could have walked free at any time if they had simply agreed to leave Britain.
News of the case, which by-passed British courts altogether, overshadowed a victory by the Home Office in the long-running saga over whether Qatada can be deported to Jordan.
Law Lords ruled that booting out the preacher of hate would not breach his human rights. But Qatada, 48, – who has already cost the taxpayer £1.5million in legal fees, prison costs and benefit payments – lodged an immediate appeal to the European court. The case could drag on for years, at enormous further cost.
Qatada, who has been linked to senior Al Qaeda figures, will be allowed to remain in the UK – where his wife and five children live in an £800,000 West London house – while the appeal is heard.
The 11 men awarded compensation today include six Algerians and Abu Rideh, a Palestinian refugee with Al Qaeda connections.
There was no limit to how much the Strasbourg court could order the Government to pay them, which sparked fears that the payouts could be huge….