News
Bethan McKernan
Sep 29, 2015
Another day, another Daily Express front page shouting about the evils of the European Union.
But tucked away inside Monday's paper was a quite staggering corrections notice the paper has been forced to issue over a story slamming European human rights law.
The article from August 19, headlined 'Look at the people who benefit from human rights law', contained the following claims:
Killer John Hirst had taken several cases to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR)
An Algerian "illegal immigrant" had used the court to overturn a child protection order
Claimant Cait Reilly had successfully argued that being forced to work in order to claim was an infringement of her human rights.
The UK government was ordered to pay the European Court of Human Rights £1.7million in 2013 alone
However, it may shock you to discover that every single point isn't true.
Human rights lawyer Shoaib M Khan complained to the newspaper about the outrageously inaccurate story. Yesterday the Daily Express removed the article from its website and issued both online and print corrections:
Turns out Hirst only bought one case to the ECtHR, the Algerian man in question didn't overturn a child protection order, Cat Reilly wasn't found to have had her human rights breached, and the UK actually paed the ECtHR £1.7million between 1998 - 2013.
Phew.
It's worth pointing out that even the correction needs correcting: the Algerian man mentioned in the story isn't an "illegal immigrant" if he has the right to be in the UK.
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