Abu Hamza fails in final bid to halt US extradition

The high court ruled today that the hook-handed preacher can be extradited to the US to face terrorism-related charges. In a last-ditch effort to avoid extradition to the US, Abu Hamza’s lawyers this week blamed the UK for harsh treatment that left the hate cleric with health problems, including depression.

The court also rejected appeals by four other men who now face US extradition – Babar Ahmad, Syed Talha Ahsan, Adel Abdul Bary and Khaled Al-Fawwaz. The men appealed complaining they would be subject to “ill treatment” if sent to the US for trial. UK judges rejected those submissions and ordered their removal from the UK.

“These proceedings are the latest and, if we refuse permission, the last, in a lengthy process of appeals and applications that has continued for some eight years in the case of three and 14 years in the case of two,” the judges said in their ruling today.

In relation to Abu Hamza’s claims of ill-health, the judges stated: “We were wholly unpersuaded that on the evidence the he was unfit to plead. We concluded that if Abu Hamza might be unfit to plead, because of sleep deprivation and physical conditions at HMP Belmarsh, then this condition being treatable could be treated in the United States.

“If any potential unfitness to plead was emerging from a degenerative condition of the brain, the court concluded that the sooner he is put on trial the better.”

Abu Hamza, 54, ex-preacher of Finsbury Park mosque in north London, faces the most serious charges. He was sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment in Britain in 2006 for inciting hatred, and US authorities accuse him of being in contact with Taliban and al-Qaeda terrorists, and of being involved in a plot to take 16 western tourists as hostages in Yemen in December 1998. Four people were killed during that incident.

He is also charged with attempting to set up a training camp for “violent jihad” in Oregon in 1999.

“There is no further appeal absent of a serious medical condition happening before they are put on the plane,” Ben Keith, a UK extradition barrister, said.

The legacy

Even Queen Elizabeth expressed her dismay as Abu Hamza’s repeated appeals against US extradition dragged on eight years, with claim after claim filed by UK-taxpayer funded lawyers on the preacher’s behalf. The BBC’s Frank Gardner said the Queen told him she had spoken to a previous home secretary to voice concern that somebody who appeared to be inciting violence and hatred was still at large.

But even though Abu Hamza may shortly find himself on a plane bound for the US, he has planted firm roots in the UK during his stay and leaves behind nine children, five of them sons over the age of 18 who have also convicted of serious offences ranging from bomb-making to fraud and assaulting police, according to a report in the Times newspaper. Four of the men, including his stepson, have served custodial sentences. The fifth is awaiting sentence for an armed robbery.

Two of his sons have not been in trouble with the law, and his two youngest are daughters ages 16 and 13. They have, at various times throughout their stay in the UK, lived in housing provided by the local council. In 2010, the family lived in a £700,000 five-bedroom council property in an exclusive west London street next door to a former cabinet minister, John Hutton.

One of the cleric’s sons, Mohammed Kamel Mostafa, 29, is a self-styled rapper who writes lyrics about weapons, jihad and praises terrorist groups including Hamas. His friends call him “MC Hamza”, according to news reports.