The hype about the arrest of Abu Hamza started off with The Sun.
The Sun is reported as actually having precipitated the 3am raid on Abu Hamza's home, by tipping off the police that they were going to publish their "story" about his imminent arrest, which they claim to have got from
"And The Sun learned last night from sources in Washington that the extradition process has been under way in secret for WEEKS."
The Sun article manages to claim, presumably for its own political agenda, that Abu Hamza is "Palestinian-born", rather than having been born in Egyptian.
They have been running a hate campaign against him so vitriolic, that, presumably, they have been trying to predjudice any jury trial which he might ever face in the UK.
"He faces deportation to America within weeks."
No, not even under the new "speedier" Extraditon Act 2003, the likelyhood is that no decision will be made on his extradition until 2005, as that is when the Special Immigration Tribunal appeal, under the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 will be heard, about the already in train process of stripping his UK nationality from him.
The Extraditon Act unjustly applies retrospectively and is a disgraceful surrender of UK sovereignty by Home Secretary David Blunkett since US authorities no longer have to show reasonable evidence to a court in the USA to apply for extradition from the UK, they just need to make a statement claiming that there might be evidence. The reverse process i.e. extradition of someone in the USA back to the UK in such a manner is forbidden under the US Constitution.
Indictment United States v. Mustafa Kamel Mustafa
a/k/a Abu Hamza al-Masri
(Why do US legal indictments seem to be produced on a manual typewriter ?)
If you actually read what he has been indicted for in the USA, one can immediatly see that the main "evidence" against him for "conspiracy", rests on the use of phone call intercept and communications data "evidence" about his home phone in the UK and a satellite phone in Yemen.
It is not illegal to buy ?500 of satellite phone air time even nowadays. It may possibly be construed to be so under the Terrorism Act 2000, but this happened in 1998, before the Act was passed.
Abu Hamza has already been questioned by UK authorities about the 1998 Yemen kidnap affair in 1999, and no charges were brought, despite an extradition request from the Yemen authorities, and the fact that Abu Hamza's sons were peripherally involved in the incident, where the storming of the kidnappers' hideout by the Yemen authorities led to the deaths of 4 of the hostages.
Presumably the USA government thinks it can make use of this phone intercept evidence which,under the UK Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, is inadmissable in a UK court.
The USA indictment uses strange, nonsensical terminology, which does not correspond to any offence under UK law, such as "jihad training camp", Does this mean a hostile weapons training camp, or does "jihad" mean, as has been pointed out countless times, simply mean "struggle" i.e. a peaceful Koranic study camp ? No camp of any sort was actually set up.
They also use the phrase "facilitating violent jihad in Afghanistan" in the period up to the USA led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. In what way was this illegal, given that the Taliban regime was only recognised by its neighbour Pakistan ?
When Abu Hamza lost his hands and eye in Afghanistan fighting the Soviet forces, was he "facilitating violent jihad in Afghanistan" ? If so, then so were many USA agents and allies.
How exactly is our security enhanced by extraditing Abu Hamza to the USA ? If he is to be extradited anywhere , it should be to the Yemen.
Better the devil you know and keep under surveillance. Abu Hamza on the streets of London, under close MI5 scrutiny must be more of an intelligence asset than having him locked away in the USA.
Why are the Government giving this fanatic the oxygen of publicity, and the chance to portray himself as a martyr ?
As far as one can see, with the possible exception of the training camp on USA soil, the charges against old Hook are not crimes in the USA. Does Bush/Blair think the USA can try people in their courts for acts allegedly committed in another country? Will Blunkett extradite a UK citizen to the USA for an unpaid parking fine? Will he extradite Maxine Carr to the USA if they ask? And as for the training camp, it sounds just like THOUSANDS of nutter camps in rural America, only most of them are inhabited by whites who hate their government, the Ruby Ridge types. Mr Bush is noticeably not bringing those people to the courts.
The only thing I can think of to explain this, other than complete totalitarianism of Blair and Blunkett, is that Blair asked Bush to help him out with the Sun newspaper by getting old Hook out of here.
According to the BBC reporter who attended the 1999 trial of the kidnappers in Yemen
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/3757681.stm
it was his report that tipped off the UK authorities to the alleged link between Abu Hamza and the satellite phone.
The leader of the kidnappers Abul Hassan Mehdar was executed, so it is going to be rather difficult to prove that he was actually the person on the phone to Abu Hamza - how do you forensically test the voice print of an executed man ?
The reasons that UK courts are not allowed to accept phone intercept material as evidence are that a) it is so easy to forge, especially if it is digitally compressed, as satellite phones and b) it reveals the sources and methods of our intelligence agencies.
The US authorities made a huge blunder when they blabbed in open court about tapping Osama bin-Laden's satellite phone, instead of using it to track and capture him and his partners in crime.
I can not wait to see him kicked out of uk and do not see why he is alowed to abuse the legal aid funds fro his case, which is eating into the the LSC national funds. Real victims of crime are being denied the same legal justice , so the balance is not right.
Abu Hamza body guard is being investergated of claims from an engish women of race hate crimes which took at last hearing at balmarsh court in
London.
We do not think that Abu Hamza is a nice person but neither do we see him as a threat.
Surely MI5 should have continued to keep him and his followers under surveillance, something which is of no use when he is inside Belmarsh.
There really does not seem to be any new or real evidence against him, if there had been, he would already have been convicted back in 1999, so the waste of public money is down to the US authorities trying to grab headlines and justify their jobs in an election year, and to the Home Office for letting them proceed.
How was it possible for one of his body guards to commit any sort of offence inside a high security prison and court at Belmarsh ? What were the police and prison guards doing, just standing idly by ?