Englishdan

Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe has instructed a top legal team to use human rights legislation to establish the minimum time he must serve behind bars.

Human rights solicitor Saimo Chahal and barrister Paul Bowen will seek to determine a minimum tariff for the serial killer.

Sutcliffe, who changed his name to Peter Coonan, was jailed in 1981 after murdering 13 women and attempting to kill seven more across Yorkshire and in Manchester.

He was sentenced to 20 life sentences and was told by the judge that he would serve a minimum of 30 years.

Ms Chahal specialises in civil liberties and social welfare as a partner at London-based Bindmans & Partners.

A statement from Bindmans said: "This firm is instructed by Mr Coonan (previously known as Peter Sutcliffe) in respect of the setting of a minimum tariff following his conviction.

"Any prisoner is entitled to have a tariff set within a reasonable time of conviction which will set out the minimum term of imprisonment to be served.

Is this what the human rights bill was designed for?

Westcountryman

Sure, set him a minimum term. No guarantee that he'll get out when he's served it though.

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Anyone who supports 42 days pre-charge detention should read this:

42-day detention: the threat to our liberty | John Major - Times Online

and this:

Why David Davis is right to make a stand | Mail Online

kernow

No Government would be stupid enough to ever set him free! Pity he hasn't been kept in a cage and taken out on a daily basis to be flogged!

Englishdan

no guarantee that he wont in this day and age either, what ****** me off is that he received 20 life sentences and received 30 years max so 18 months for each life sentence and the ******* has human rights experts queueing up to help him to get out

Besoeker

I wonder who is paying for the solicitor and the barrister?

rjt

Indeed 18 months per murder conviction seems to pay little in the way of attention as regards the human rights of the familys of the victims of Sutcliffes reign of terror

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Mr Delors said that he wanted the European Parliament to be the democratic body of the community, The Commission to be The Executive and The Council Of Ministers The Senate. NO! NO! NO!
(Margaret Thatcher 30 Oct 1990)

Ignore List: The Prophets of ST Al the Unelectable.

Aardvark

The problem we have is many people do not understand why the European Convention on Human Rights, upon which our statute is based, was drafted.

The ECHR was written in the post-war era where people had suffered torture and death routinely with neither charge nor hearing and people had no private life without state interference. The build up to WWII had seen 'human rights' all but extinguished under the dictatorships of not only Germany, but much of eastern, central and southern Europe. Spain and Portugal as well as all of the Soviet occupied territories were run arbitrarily and fair trials were unheard of (having sat in hearings in Armenia and Belarus there is still a long way to go). Mail was routinely opened, children were encouraged to spy on their parents, alternate political views were suppressed and people were gaoled for indefinite periods without trial having been arrested without proper evidence. Religion was crushed in many countries and church leaders were all but exterminated in some parts of the Soviet Union. Churches, synagogues and mosques were destroyed. All Jewish property under Nazi occupation was declared 'unowned' and neighbours were encouraged to report former friends in order to steal their goods. Millions of women were raped or abused. Children were butchered in their millions. Villages were wiped out in acts of collective punishment by Communists and Nazis alike. Property was seized from middle class and upper class families without compensation in Soviet occupied areas and land was collectivised with great suffering. Whole ethnic groups were virtually exterminated by the Nazis (Jews, Gypsies) or deported with massive loss of life by Stalin (Chechens, Tatars, Koreans, Transpontine Greeks, Turks, Volga Germans etc).

Against this background a concerned western Europe sought to establish standards by which we should all try to live. It is doubtful that the writers of the ECHR thought for a moment that a common criminal, tried and found guilty by his peers in accordance with the law, would seek to use the convention to reduce his sentence and to gain compensation. That is an insult to the millions of people butchered arbitrarily without recourse to courts to protect their lives and property.

If Peter Sutcliffe wanted human rights he shouldn't have killed so many people - what of their rights? Personally I think he should have hanged for his crimes.

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When in Woking do as the Wokes do.

"I do not wish to form my opinions by thoughtlessly quoting others; I wish others to support their opinions by sensibly quoting me." Paul Wesson (Aardvark) 13th April 2008