25 September 2012
After a long legal battle the UK is finally preparing to extradite five Muslims who are deemed to be extremists by the British authorities, including Muslim cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri and Babar Ahmad, to the United States. The Grand Chamber of The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that they can be sent to the United States to face terrorism charges.
Abu Hamza is currently serving a seven-year prison term in Britain for inciting hatred and he is wanted in the US for planning a terror training camp in the US and assisting hostage-taking in Yemen. The other suspects, Babar Ahmad, Syed Talha Ahsan, Adel Abdul Bary and Khaled al-Fawwaz are also facing similar charges.
Meantime, it has been revealed that the Queen herself lobbied for arrest of Abu Hamza. In an interview, BBC’s security correspondent Frank Gardner said the Queen told him she was appalled that Abu Hamza could not be arrested while he regularly delivered anti-British speeches as imam of Finsbury Park mosque in north London.
Gardner said: “She spoke to the home secretary at the time and said, surely this man must have broken some laws. Why is he still at large? He was conducting these radical activities and he called Britain a toilet. He was incredibly anti-British and yet he was sucking up money from this country for a long time. He was a huge embarrassment to Muslims, who condemned him.”
