Court rules mentally-ill terror plotter should not be deported to US

Haroon Aswat, who is being held at Broadmoor high-security psychiatric hospital, is wanted by US prosecutors for allegedly plotting with Hamza to set up a terror training camp in Bly, Oregon.

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled extradition would be unlawful because of the severity of paranoid schizophrenic Aswat’s mental illness.

Hamza and four other terror suspects were extradited last year after the Strasbourg court rejected their appeal against the move.

Aswat claims that if he is extradited and convicted in the US, he would be at risk of ill-treatment inside the so-called supermax prison ADX Florence, in Colorado.

A chamber of seven judges ruled: “The court found that there was a real risk that Mr Aswat’s extradition to the USA, a country to which he had no ties, and to a different, potentially more hostile prison environment, would result in a significant deterioration in his mental and physical health.”

Despite receiving submissions from the US Department of Justice, the ECHR found that it could not be “determined with certainty” in which prison or prisons Mr Aswat would be locked up if sent to the US.

A Home Office spokesman said they would consider their options “as a matter of urgency”, including referring the case to the Court’s Grand Chamber.

Hamza, who was serving a seven-year sentence in Britain for soliciting to murder and inciting racial hatred, has denied charges related to the taking of 16 hostages in Yemen in 1998 and advocating violent jihad in Afghanistan in 2001.