Nowadays, it’s remarkably easy to brand anyone a terrorist.

Often no evidence is required.

If the government and certain sections of the media brand someone as a radical terrorist with suspected links to a certain group, then it must be so.

Generally the brainwashed population blindly accept this as fact.

Take the widely publicized case of Abu Qatada, who is currently under worldwide embargo by the United Nations Security Council Committee 1267 for his alleged affiliation with al-Qaeda.

Abu Qatada has been systematically imprisoned in Britain since 2002, when he was first detained under anti-terrorism laws.

In spite of various government officials branding him dangerous and radical, he has not been prosecuted here for any crime, or actually charged with anything.

Our Government is currently trying to deport him, having extracted a “cross my heart” promise from Jordan not to torture him.

I don’t know the man personally, and I don’t know if he is as dangerous as Theresa May (current Home Secretary) keeps on telling us.

What I do object to is our current policy of locking people up under draconian anti-terror laws, and not actually charging them with anything.

The normal civilized rule of law dictates that a suspect is apprehended and charged, and a case is built. The suspect then goes to court, and, if guilty, they are convicted and go to prison.

Not in this case. This man has previously been bailed from prison, then re-arrested.

In November 2008, Qatada was rearrested at his home. The Special Immigration Appeals Commission rescinded his bail, stating he had not broken bail conditions, but “might do at some time in the future”.

So in this country, we release someone on bail, then put them back in prison on the basis they “might” break their bail conditions in the future – even though there was no concrete explanation given for this assumption.

Not unreasonably, I would actually like to see some evidence against this man.

I have read through a vast amount of news reports, and so far, despite the British government branding him a “Fanatical Radical Cleric, who is clearly dangerous” they have not so far provided any evidence to support this claim.

Our government tells us something, we blindly believe it.

I’ve read the claim that Abu Qatada was Osama Bin Laden’s “right hand man” in Europe, and depending on which newspaper you read, this opinion has been credited to everyone from a Middle East Terrorism expert, our own government, various newspapers, a High Court Judge, and my dog.

I could declare I suspect my neighbour was Saddam Hussein’s Right Hand Man in Camden Town.

I could say it.  Doesn’t make it so.

Not unless I quantify this statement with evidence.

The same government who now tells us what to think is the same that has lied to the British public numerous times over the years:

Weapons of mass destruction, North Korea launching missiles at Europe, various dictators once propped up and sold weapons to by the West, then branded murderous dictators who must be bombed. If few innocent civilians lose their lives in the process, that’s unfortunate.

The real problem with the so called “War on Terror” is that if you bomb your way around the world, all you really do is give various people a reason to hate you, and foster revenge.

And when we’ve devastated all these countries under the ludicrous guise of liberating them and promoting our particular brand of democracy, we’ll dehumanize all the people our armed forces have killed.

They are no longer people, but become “insurgents”, “rebels” or “enemy combatants”

The reality is ordinary civilians are killed in these invasions – someone’s mother, brother, father, sister.

After our rather biased media get through reporting these “unfortunate” civilian deaths, we seem to forget that an Iraqi, Afghan, Palestinian, or African life is no less precious than anyone one else’s.

Biggest irony is that when we in the West bomb another country and murder people, we are clearly spreading democracy.

If someone else does it, they’re rogue states, headed by evil murdering dictators.

And of course, we’ll teach them violence is wrong by bombing them….