Abu Hamza extradition: US court hears terror suspects

Islamist cleric Abu Hamza and four other terror suspects have appeared in court in the US, having been extradited from the UK after a long legal battle.

Abu Hamza appeared briefly in a New York court before being taken into custody, ahead of a plea hearing scheduled for Tuesday.

Also in New York, Adel Abdul Bary and Khaled al-Fawwaz pleaded not guilty.

Earlier, Babar Ahmad and Talha Ahsan pleaded not guilty in a court in Connecticut.

The five suspects had left the UK from an RAF base on two flights, hours after the High Court rejected final appeals against their extradition on Friday.

Abu Hamza faces 11 charges in the US relating to hostage-taking, conspiracy to establish a militant training camp and calling for holy war in Afghanistan.

Mr al-Fawwaz and Mr Bary are accused of being aides to the late al-Qaeda leader, Osama Bin Laden, in London.

Mr Ahmad and Mr Ahsan were indicted in 2004 and 2006 respectively for allegedly using a website from a Connecticut-based internet service provider to support terrorism in Afghanistan and the Russian region of Chechnya.

Jailed until trial

Mr Ahmad and Mr Ahsan were placed in custody until trial after their appearance in the federal court in New Haven, Connecticut. Their lawyers declined to comment.

Their next appearance in court is scheduled for 15 October, a spokesman for US prosecutors told AFP news agency.

Much of the media focus has been on Abu Hamza, whom the US first tried to extradite in 2004 on 11 charges, including a hostage-taking in Yemen in 1998 when four people were killed.

The process was halted when the UK decided to try him on allegations of soliciting to murder and stirring up racial hatred relating to his sermons. He was convicted in 2006.

UK Prime Minister David Cameron said: "I'm absolutely delighted that Abu Hamza is now out of this country.

"Like the rest of the public I'm sick to the back teeth of people who come here, threaten our country, who stay at vast expense to the taxpayer and we can't get rid of them."

Mary Galligan, acting deputy head of the FBI, said: "The extraditions of Abu Hamza, Bary and Fawwaz are a major milestone in our effort to see these alleged high-level terrorists face American justice.

She said they were accused of "planning and carrying out some of the most odious acts of al-Qaeda terrorism".

Jurisdiction argument

Campaigners against the extradition of Mr Ahmad and Mr Ahsan argued that their alleged crimes had been committed while they were in the UK so they should be tried before British courts.

The US authorities accuse Mr Ahmad of running an important pro-jihad website called Azzam.com.

During the 1990s and early 2000s the English-language website played a key role in encouraging young Muslims in the West to support Mujahideen causes in Bosnia, Chechnya and Afghanistan.

In the indictment, US prosecutors describe one of the most feared Chechen militant leaders of the time, the late Shamil Basayev, as a threat to US national security.

The Americans successfully argued that because the website was technically hosted by a company based in Connecticut, it had jurisdiction.

Mr Ahsan faces the same allegations as Mr Ahmad.

Both men also argued unsuccessfully that if they were convicted, they would be held at a special "supermax" prison in the US, where the conditions, including solitary confinement, amount to torture, and inhuman and degrading treatment.

Before his extradition, Mr Ahmad had been in prison in the UK since August 2004, setting what appeared to be a record for the longest time that a British national has been detained without trial in modern times.

Source: BBC (06/10/2012): http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-19857517