Britain to extradite Islamist cleric Abu Hamza to United States

The European Human Rights Court rejected Monday a final appeal by radical Islamist cleric Abu Hamza to stop his extradition from Britain to the United States, where he is wanted on terrorism charges.

The court upheld the judges’ decision in April in favor of extradition for Hamza and other suspected extremists, ruling that the heavy prison sentence they could possibly face in the U.S. would not be disproportionate to the charges.

“Today the Grand Chamber Panel decided to reject the request. This means that the Chamber judgment of 10 April 2012 is now final,” the court said in a statement.

Egyptian-born Abu Hamza, the former imam of the Finsbury Park mosque in north London, is wanted in the United States on charges including setting up an al-Qaeda-style training camp for militants in the northwestern U.S. state of Oregon.

He is also accused of having sent money and recruits to assist Afghanistan’s hardline Taliban militia and al-Qaeda and helping a gang of kidnappers in Yemen who abducted a 16-strong party of Western tourists in 1998.

Hamza, who is in his mid-50s and has one eye and a hook for one hand, was jailed in Britain for seven years in 2006 for inciting followers to murder non-believers.

Abu Hamza was granted British citizenship in 1986. The American authorities have described him as a “terrorist facilitator with a global reach.”
Source: Al Arabiya.net