Posted on 11/16/2007 9:21:28 PM PST by NormsRevenge
LONDON (Reuters) - A British court ruled Thursday that radical Muslim cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri could be extradited to the United States to face terrorism charges including trying to set up an al Qaeda training camp in Oregon.
Egyptian-born Hamza, 49, serving a seven-year jail term in Britain for inciting his followers to murder nonbelievers, is wanted by U.S. authorities on 11 charges.
The U.S. indictment accuses Hamza -- who had a hook in place of a missing hand -- of attempting to set up a terrorist training camp in Bly, Oregon, from 1999 to early 2000, and also providing support to al Qaeda and the Taliban.
Hamza, who applauded the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington in 2001, also faces charges that he was involved in plotting the seizure of 16 Western hostages in Yemen in 1998.
Four of the hostages, three Britons and an Australian, were killed when Yemeni troops stormed the militants' hide-out.
Hamza was quizzed at the time by British police but was not charged and Washington said it had since obtained new evidence -- an interview the cleric had given to one of the hostages who survived.
If convicted, he faces a maximum sentence of up to 100 years in prison.
London's City of Westminster Magistrates' Court approved the extradition but the decision now has to be ratified by the British home secretary (interior minister).
"We continue to watch these ongoing legal proceedings carefully with respect to his (Hamza's) extradition request and are hopeful that ultimately he will be able to stand trial in New York," U.S. Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd said in Washington.
Under new extradition laws brought in this year, suspects can be extradited from Britain to the United States while they are serving a jail term.
However, in a rare British rebuke of the U.S. penal system, Judge Timothy Workman criticized the solitary confinement regime at top U.S. security prisons and said its use could be enough to block an extradition on human rights grounds.
"In my view if such a regime were to be applied for a lengthy, indefinite period it could properly amount to inhuman and degrading treatment which would violate article 3 (of the European Convention on Human Rights)," Workman said.
Hamza, a former nightclub bouncer, was jailed by a London court in February 2006 over sermons which prosecutors said repeatedly advocated the killing of Jews and other non-Muslims.
Although he was never linked to any specific plot, police said his Finsbury Park Mosque had acted as a base for militants.
A number of Islamists jailed for plotting attacks in Britain in recent years worshiped there, and the mosque had attracted the likes of convicted "shoebomber" Richard Reid and jailed September 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui.
Hamza, who has one eye and wore the hook in place of two hands he lost in Afghanistan, had long been a hate figure for the British tabloid press, a sentiment that grew in intensity after the London bombings in July 2005.
However after his conviction, his British lawyer said Hamza felt he was a "prisoner of faith." His lawyers said they would fight the extradition request on human rights grounds and argued he should be tried in Britain over the Yemen charges.
An August 25, 2002 file photograph shows radical Muslim cleric Sheikh Abu Hamza al-Masri addressing the sixth annual rally for Islam in Trafalgar Square, London. A court ruled on Thursday that Abu Hamza al-Masri could be extradited to the United States to face terrorism charges including trying to set up an al Qaeda training camp in Oregon. (Ian Waldie/Reuters)
If ever there was a candidate for so-called “waterboarding” this sh:theel is it. He’ll wish he was at Gitmo before the DIA boys are done with him...
The only thing he’s missing is a tatoo of the jolly roger on his forehead.
Hamza is going to die, alone, in the US prison cell that he spends the est of his life screaming at the at the walls.
Pain Be Upon Him.
Muslim cleric Abu Hamza kept a terrorism “manual” which contained a dedication to Osama bin Laden and suggested a list of potential targets which included skyscrapers and Big Ben, the Old Bailey heard.
The Encyclopaedia of Afghani Jihad, which was found at Hamza’s home, also advised hitting targets such as the Statue of Liberty or the Eiffel Tower to cause “destruction” and suggested attacks on museums or archaeological sites. It said plans “should be laid out” to hit buildings such skyscrapers, ports, airports, nuclear plants and football stadiums and it talked about attacking large congregations of people at Christmas.
“This, the prosecution say, is a blueprint, a manual for terrorism which echoes the things which feature in the defendant’s speeches,” said David Perry prosecuting.... ———— “Hamza ‘had terrorism manual’ ,” the Evening Standard, ?January 13, 2006? via http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/2006/01/009783print.html Posted at January 13, 2006 06:43 AM
* Abu Hamza : The barely literate former Finsbury Park Mosque headliner makes a fetish of dressing in flowing Arabic robes and looking sinister, using a steel hook, rather than a lifelike prosthetics, for a hand. He claims to have lost his eye and both hands fighting the Russians with the mujahudin in Afghanistan. However, writing in Front Page Magazine last year, Farrukh Dhondy noted that the dates don’t gibe with photographs. There are pictures of Hamza years after the Afghan Russian conflict with two hands and two eyes. Dhondy speculated that Captain Claw could owe the loss of his eye and his hand to careless handling of a bomb he was making. ———Snatching Captain Claw
FrontPageMagazine.com ^ | 5/28/04 | Val MacQueen
I do not wish to spoil anyone's meal here but..... I understand that a male nurse is employed and on call for this sick,cruel individual. It has something to do with how a man with a hook for a hand, can use it after evacuating his bowels.
He must not be allowed to go free. What a price society has to pay for the damned Geneva Convention. The terrorists must be laughing themselves stupid. Using every facet of "human rights" and then behaving like sub-humans.
Judge Workman invoked article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights. An updated version possibly of the old Geneva Convention.
To paraphrase a modern US talk show colloquialism, “talk to the hook, cause the patch ain’t listening!”
See ye, Abu! I hope the US authorities go to town on you!
(I used to live in Finsbury Park. The man is a truly stone cold nutter, in a religion full of them!)
Agreed, the infuriating thing is the deference paid to their "human rights". They must think we are the biggest fools on the planet, in some circumstances, I think some of the authorities are. I hope the Americans get hold of him, maybe CAIR will fund an expensive lawyer and all that.
P.S. Dating myself but the only time I heard of Finsbury Park, when I lived in the Ruislip/Northwood area, was - being a boxing fan, of the two boxing brothers Danny and Dicky O'Sullivan (Finsbury Park). circa 1950's.
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