UK to hand cleric to US ‘as quickly as possible’

Radical cleric Abu Hamza and four other terrorist suspects wanted by the US authorities will be handed over “as quickly as possible”, according to the British home secretary.

Britain can extradite its most notorious Islamist cleric to the US to stand trial on charges that he supported al Qaeda and aided a fatal kidnapping in Yemen, the European Court of Human Rights ruled.

The Egyptian-born Abu Hamza al Masri, a one-eyed radical with a metal hook for a hand who praised the Sept 11, 2001 attacks, faces over 100 years in US prisons if found guilty, a step he said would contravene his human rights.

However, the seven judges at the Strasbourg-based European court ruled unanimously that sending Hamza and four other suspects to such “supermax” penitentiaries would be lawful and that they would not receive “inhuman and degrading treatment”.

The court gave the suspects — including Babar Ahmad, Syed Tahla Ahsan, Adel Abdul Bary and Khaled al Fawwaz — three months to appeal against the ruling to a panel of five European judges.

The case, pitting the rights of men suspected of grave crimes against the demands of the US for justice, has electrified the British media, which vilified Hamza as “the hook-handed hate preacher” and agitated against hindrances to his extradition.

“Sling your hook,” a frontpage headline in The Sun once read, next to a picture of the preacher.

The Strasbourg court said US authorities would not allow Hamza, who sports a metal hook after losing his hands in unclear circumstances in Afghanistan, to serve his sentence in the Florence Administrative Maximum Facility (ADX) prison in Colorado because of his disabilities.

Usually known for needling governments over human rights breaches, the court ruled that incarceration in Florence ADX — known as the “Alcatraz of the Rockies” and home to gang leaders, serial killers, and bombers — for the other suspects would not amount to ill-treatment.

It adjourned its ruling on a sixth suspect, Haroon Rashid Aswat, pending a mental health report.

A former preacher at the Finsbury Park Mosque in north London, Hamza is viewed as one of the most radical Islamists in Britain, a country he has attacked for its support of US-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

At the mosque, dozens of worshippers streaming in for prayers were reluctant to talk about Hamza.

“People who are not Muslims think anyone who came into the mosque were extremists,” said Youba Sidali, a 30-year-old from Algeria. “I think Abu Hamza doesn’t represent Muslims.”

Hamza was jailed for seven years in 2006 for inciting murder and racial hatred and for possessing literature such as the al Qaeda handbook, a manual on how to wage war against governments and replace them with Muslim ones.

Hamza — real name Mustafa Kamal Mustafa — was indicted by a federal grand jury in new York in Apr 2004. He was accused of involvement in a 1998 hostage taking in Yemen which resulted in the deaths of four Western hostages.

He was also accused of providing material support to al Qaeda by trying to set up a training camp for fighters in the US state of Oregon and of trying to organise support for the Taliban in Afghanistan.

British prime minister said he was pleased with the decision but frustrated with the time it took to approve the extradition.

The UK home secretary, Theresa May, said the British government would “work to ensure that the suspects are handed over to the US authorities as quickly as possible”.