Chickenzzz . . . Comin' Home . . .

This should cause members of the National Lawyers Guild to salivate uncontrollably. I'd expect that PuffHobots and the Kooky Kult of Koslam will go more apeshit than they already are.

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.

Heh. Change Abu Hamza al-Asshat can believe in.

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.

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

Via Times Online

Tubby Terrorist: I'm Starving!

May I recommend the roast pork loin deep-fried in bacon grease?

You've got to love the headline.

HUNGRY HIPPO HAMZA’S LIST OF PRISON DEMANDS

This fat bastard may even outweigh that slob Dougie Hooper.

OVERWEIGHT preacher of hate Abu Hamza has given prison officials a list of demands after telling his lawyer: “I’m starving in here.”

Hamza, 49, who weighs about 20 stone, has told jail chiefs he wants more and better food, extra phone time and an end to constant strip searches.

The former imam of Finsbury Park Mosque in north London, who is fighting extradition to the US, also objects to squatting during searches as it contravenes Islamic law.

Hamza, who has hooks after losing both hands, is serving seven years at Belmarsh prison in south London for soliciting the murder of non-Muslims and inciting racial hatred.

A dossier of complaints compiled by his solicitors states: “He receives insufficient food which appears to be out-of-date and does not meet his dietary requirements.


“He has been left in a room without adequate facilities to meet the needs of a disabled person. This included no heads on taps so he did not have access to cold water and didn’t have his diabetic pack.”

His team at Arani Solicitors claims Hamza was strip searched 13 times in one day, making him feel “degraded”.

The statement reads: “On one occasion, Shaykh Abu Hamza was strip searched 13 times during the period 8am to 5pm in one day alone.

“Many Muslims will be aware that strip searches and other degrading practices, such as squatting, are against Islam.”

Hamza also complained to his lawyers that he does not have enough phone credit – making it impossible for him to prepare his legal defence.

The statement says: “His telephone credit was also confiscated, denying him the right to prepare for his court hearing adequately.”

Inmates of the category A jail, which houses some of Britain’s most dangerous prisoners, have branded Hamza the “Hungry Hippo” because of his vast bulk. A prison insider said: “It was a label which instantly stuck – he’s a big man and everyone knows him for wearing that grey outfit. When word got round that he was moaning about being hungry, it seemed an obvious title.”

My heart goes out to anyone in his presence when he was strip-searched.

H/T Shiplord Kirel.

AP Gets Cozy With Islamic Jihad

It appears this fellow didn't get the memo.

Must be part of that 0.1% of Muslims who's causing trouble for the other 99.9%.

And isn't it interesting how easily the Associated Press gets access to him to enjoy his pearls of wisdon while the children frolic about?

The militant known as Abu Hamza is constantly on the run from Israel, and his hideout today is a dank room at the back of a nondescript house filled with adults and frolicking children.

The room is barren except for a computer hooked up to the Internet, which the Islamic Jihad commander said is used to plan rocket attacks on southern Israel. He pledged to keep up the violence despite the growing likelihood of a major Israeli military offensive in the Gaza Strip.

"We must create a balance of terror with the enemy," he told The Associated Press in a rare interview.

Abu Hamza is a small, soft-spoken man with a wide smile, but the rockets that Islamic Jihad fires into Israel almost daily serve as constant reminders that renewed talk of Mideast peace remains a distant dream in the violence-torn Gaza Strip.

Israel's military says Gaza militants have fired some 980 rockets into Israel since June, when Hamas seized power in the coastal territory. That compares to 440 in the preceding four months. In all, thousands of crude rockets fired over the past seven years have killed 12 Israelis, wounded dozens and disrupted life for thousands.

Israeli troops and settlers withdrew from Gaza more than two years ago — and Israel has begun a fledgling peace process with the moderate Palestinian forces now in control of the West Bank. So why is Islamic Jihad still raining missiles on Israeli towns, provoking fierce retaliation and a new Israeli threat to cut off Gaza's electricity?

Uh, because they hate Jews?

Could that be a possibility, Mr. Steven Gutkin, Associated Press Writer?

Islamic Jihad, a virulently anti-Israel group backed by Iran and Syria, has killed dozens of Israelis in suicide bombings and is believed to have about 2,000 militants armed with M-16 and AK-47 automatic rifles, grenades and anti-tank weapons.

It operates independently of the much larger Hamas, whose tolerance and sometimes encouragement of rocket attacks have increased Gaza's isolation. Hamas' blind eye to Islamic Jihad rockets — along with mortar fire by its own militants — has helped burnish its credentials among Gazans as a "government of resistance." But it is also endangering Hamas' rule in Gaza by contributing to the economic decline.

Contacts known by AP journalists to be Islamic Jihad members arranged the meeting with Abu Hamza, his nom de guerre that is well known in Gaza even if his face is not. He spoke to AP reporters without donning the black ski mask usually worn by senior militants in press interviews, but he refused to allow himself to be filmed, photographed or recorded.

During the session, he wore a loose-fitting shirt instead of the military fatigues associated with Islamic Jihad. Though he carried no weapon, some of the men around him did — sitting nearby on ragged floor mats in the paint-chipped room. No food or drink was served in observance of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Getting to the interview required a long, labyrinthine car drive through the back alleys of the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis — stopping every few blocks to wait for phone instructions on how to proceed. At times, men popped their heads out of doorways along the street to give the all-clear signal.

Abu Hamza spoke softly and methodically, making frequent eye contact with an American reporter. But there was no mistaking the bitterness of his words.

"Resistance must continue until we uproot the occupation from all the land of Palestine ... from the sea to the river," he said, outlining Islamic Jihad's position that a future Palestinian state must replace Israel, not live alongside it.

Seems the AP has quite the cozy relationship with these militants.

Is it any wonder so often they and other news services (hello, Reuters) always seem to be at the right place for photo ops?

At one point, Abu Hamza said his group would consider a temporary halt to rocket fire if Israel stopped pursuing militants and opened Gaza's borders. But that statement was rendered meaningless by his subsequent assertion that other forms of "resistance" — such as suicide attacks and roadside bombs — would continue during any rocket truce.

Israeli intelligence officials declined to discuss Abu Hamza, saying they prefer not to divulge information about wanted militants who are still on the run.

But a top architect of Israel's military policy in Gaza was quoted Thursday in the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot as saying the rocket attacks will have to be confronted with a major display of armed force.

"A ground operation is a question of timing," said Maj. Gen. Moshe Kaplinsky, the Israeli army's recently reassigned deputy chief of staff.

Meaning this thug's days may be numbered. Still, the benefactors involved must be dealt with.

Wonder who they could be?

The interview with the AP took place in a house where toddlers laughed and played. Islamic Jihad has often been criticized for operating among civilians, exposing them to the risk of Israeli fire.

Abu Hamza denied the assertion by Israel and much of the world that Islamic Jihad gets money and other backing from Iran and Syria, calling it "completely ridiculous."

But Mkhaimar Abusada, a political scientist at Gaza's Al Azhar University, said there is no doubt Syria and Iran are involved.

"There are outsiders giving orders from outside the Gaza Strip, whether from Damascus or Tehran, for their own reasons," Abusada said. "They (Gaza militants) are doing this because they're getting paid for it."

'Immigrants are Better Citizens Than the British'

What is it with these morons who run down their own populace while extolling the virtues of people who want to kill them and destroy their way of life?

Immigrants are "better citizens" than those born in Britain, a migration expert has said.

The extraordinary attack came from Keith Best, head of the Immigration Advisory Service - a government-backed charity which receives £13million of public money every year.

The former Tory MP was responding to an article in the Mail revealing that a foreigner is granted a UK passport every five minutes.

He said: "These people have actively sought British citizenship because they want to make a contribution to the UK.

That and they want to set up terror cells in order to destroy Great Britain.

Was this clown out of town during the 7/7 train bombings? Does Glasgow Airport ring any bells?

I am not sure how many people born in this country have the same commitment. The tests for citizenship are greater than they have ever been.

"We are now turning immigrants into better citizens than people born with a British passport."

Matthew Elliott, chief executive of the TaxPayers' Alliance pressure group, said:"Mr Best's comments are completely offensive to decent, patriotic people born in the UK.

"Taxpayers shouldn't be funding an outfit that describes them as being second-rate citizens.

"If the Immigration Advisory Service is to continue receiving public money, Mr Best should either apologise or resign."

Immigrants who have been granted citizenship include cleric Abu Hamza, who was jailed last year for incitement to murder.

He was later stripped of the status after more than 20 years of using his British passport to call for the country's destruction. The Immigration Advisory Service - which is paid by the Government to provide legal advice to asylum seekers and other migrants - has been given millions of pounds since Labour came to power.