Heh. Change Abu Hamza al-Asshat can believe in.Radical cleric Abu Hamza loses extradition appeal
Abu Hamza al-Masri, the radical Muslim cleric, today lost his High Court battle against extradition to the US, where he faces terrorism charges.
Judges rejected his lawyers' submission that the US evidence was “tainted by torture” and therefore inadmissible. They ruled that there was an “unassailable” case against the fundamentalist preacher.
Sir Igor Judge and Mr Justice Sullivan, sitting at the High Court in London, gave his lawyers 14 days to apply for leave to launch a final appeal to the House of Lords against Jacqui Smith's approval of the extradition request.
Abu Hamza, 51, who was born in Egypt, is serving a seven-year jail term for incitement to racial hatred and violence at the top-security Belmarsh prison in southeast London.
Until 2003 he operated from the Finsbury Park Mosque in North London where his radical sermons attracted extremists, including the September 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui and Richard Reid, the failed shoe bomber.
The US authorities want Abu Hamza to stand trial on charges of attempting to set up an al-Qaeda training camp in Oregon and sending money and recruits to assist the Taliban and al-Qaeda
They also allege that he took part in a deadly hostage-taking incident in Yemen in 1998 involving 16 tourists. Three Britons and an Australian were killed in a shootout between Yemeni security forces and the Islamic extremist captors.
If he is eventually extradited to the US after exhausting all avenues of appeal, he could face a total of 11 terrorism charges.
To the embarrassment of the British Government, part of the American prosecution’s case will be built on intelligence gathered by officers in Britain but ruled to be inadmissible in court.
A leading counter-terrorism investigator told The Times that if the secret recordings had been admissible, Abu Hamza would have been prosecuted for his alleged role in the Yemen abductions and deaths in the UK.
He was the first person to be arrested under the streamlined Anglo-American extradition treaty when police raided his home in May 2004. The extradition process was put on hold for his trial in Britain on incitement charges and subsequent attempts to appeal against his convictions.
The House of Lords refused him leave to make further appeals against his convictions leaving the path clear for extradition proceedings.
Today the High Court judges said they had reached the “clear conclusion that the order made by Judge Workman was properly made, and that the subsequent decision of [Jacqui Smith, Home Secretary] was unassailable”.
Abu Hamza’s lawyers had argued that extradition was unlawful because he would be tried in the US “on the basis of the fruits of torture”. They said there was clear evidence that torture was used on some individuals in the process of gathering the information which led to the US extradition request.
They also contended that it would be “unjust and oppressive” to extradite because of the passage of time and incompatible with Abu Hamza’s human rights. Any further trial should take place in London, they said.
In rejecting all the arguments, the judges said the suggestion that the US evidence was “tainted by torture” and therefore inadmissible was flawed.
“The submission fails to recognise that, unlike evidence obtained directly by torture, the ’fruits of the poisoned tree’ are, in principle, admissible under domestic law, and that in this respect there is no fundamental difference between the approach to such evidence either in this country or in the USA,” they ruled.
They concluded that none of the material relied on by the US authorities “carries anything of the smell of the torture chamber sufficient to require its exclusion in a trial in this country”.
The allegation of torture had also been made “in the most general terms, unsupported by evidence”. It failed to distinguish between evidence “which is the indirect fruits of torture and that which is indirectly obtained as a result of ill-treatment falling short of torture”.
Abu Hamza’s future now depends on the granting of a request to make a final appeal to the House of Lords.
A few comments made by Times Online readers
Good riddance to him and all those hypocrites that follow him under the sanctity of our free nation. Take the Labour government with you and all the demoralising, identity stripping door wide open policies to absolutely anybody that can only take and not give back to our country.Via Times Online
a, Midlands,
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You mean our courts actually got something right !!
Just a shame that the Amerricans wont be able to give him the Death Penalty due to our extradition laws.
Dean, Southampton, England
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Good for the judges. I hope the Americans send him to Guantanamo Bay for a while before trial.
Brian O Cinneide, eThekwini, Afrika Borwa
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Whoopee
A rational outcome from our creaking "justice" system for once.
Keep your fingers crossed that this decision doesn't get overturned.
Sean, Coventry, UK
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But will he get through US Security with those "weapons" ? And what about his finger prints... surely you can't allow anyone in the States without having their DNA on record first?
A, London,
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I wonder why he wants to stay in the UK so badly, since he has spent so much effort decrying it?
Antonio, Estepona, Spain
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Someone actually has some sense? I'll keep the champagne on hold until he's left the country though.
Luke, London, UK
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