Abu Hamza
‘on plane in weeks’ after his appeal 
bid fails

Hamza’s appeal bid over a European Court of Human Rights ruling his extradition would not breach his human rights was rejected by a panel of judges last night, a spokesman for the court said.

It means Hamza, who was jailed for seven years for soliciting to murder and inciting racial hatred, will be extradited with four others, including computer expert Babar Ahmad, who has been held the UK without trial for eight years after being accused of raising funds for terrorism.

They are likely to be put on a plane to the US within two or three weeks, it is understood.

A Home Office spokesman said: “We will work to ensure that the individuals are handed over to the US authorities as quickly as possible.”

The ruling amounts to a first green light for US top security prisons, and the right of European governments to approve US extradition requests for high-risk suspects.

Hamza’s request for an appeal delayed a total of five cases related to the same judgment at the ECHR on April 10 which said “detention conditions and length of sentences of five alleged terrorists would not amount to ill-treatment if they were extradited to the USA”.

The unanimous ruling said there would be no violation of Article 3 of the Human Rights Code – the prohibition of inhuman and degrading treatment – as a result of detention conditions they might face at ADX Florence “supermax” prison in Colorado, and the length of their possible sentences, if convicted, would not breach their human rights under European law either.

The judges said that between 1999 and 2006 the men were indicted on various terrorism charges in America.

Hamza has been charged with 11 counts of criminal conduct related to the taking of 16 hostages in Yemen in 1998, advocating violent jihad in Afghanistan in 2001 and conspiring to establish a jihad training camp in Bly, Oregon, between June 2000 and December 2001.

Aswat was indicted as Hamza’s “co-conspirator”, while Bary and Al-Fawwaz were indicted – with Osama bin Laden and 20 others – for their alleged involvement in, or support for, the bombing of US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in 1998. Al-Fawwaz faces more than 269 counts of murder.

Ahmad and Ahsan are accused of offences including providing support to terrorists and conspiracy to kill, kidnap, maim or injure persons or damage property in a foreign country.

The judges acknowledged that, in America, Bary faced 269 mandatory sentences of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, while Ahmad, Ahsan, Hamza and Al-Fawwaz faced “discretionary” life sentences but concluded: “Having regard to the seriousness of the offences in question, the court did not consider that these sentences were grossly disproportionate or amounted to inhuman or degrading treatment.”

They said “supermax” jail inmates, albeit confined to cells for the “vast majority” of their time, were provided with services and activities – television, radio, newspapers, books, hobby and craft items, telephone calls, social visits, correspondence with families, group prayer – which went “beyond what was provided in most prisons in Europe”.

Ahmad’s family urged Home Secretary Theresa May to halt the extradition until a decision is made on a potential private prosecution in the UK.

“This matter should never have come to this stage had the British police done their job almost nine years ago and provided the material seized from Babar’s home to the CPS rather than secretly passing it to their US counterparts,” the family said in a statement.

“... We now call on the Home Secretary to immediately undertake to halt any extradition until the Director of Public Prosecutions makes a decision on the material that is in his possession.”