Last week's conviction -- in London -- of an Egyptian-born preacher for inciting racial hatred and violence has sparked a major debate, reports Jailan Halawi The British legal system has come under intense scrutiny in the wake of a 7 February verdict convicting former mosque preacher Abu Hamza El-Masry of inciting racial hatred and soliciting murder. El-Masry was sentenced to seven years in jail. Several Egyptian newspapers slammed the court's ruling, focusing much of their questioning on its timing. Foreign governments and intelligence agencies had warned the UK about El-Masry as far back as 1995. The fact that the British courts only acted now was seen by political experts and civil rights groups as an exploitation of the preacher's case to bolster British Prime Minister Tony Blair's plans to create new anti-terrorism laws. The trial revealed that police had sent evidence to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) -- which oversees all criminal cases in England and Wales -- "on several occasions" since 1999, yet no action was taken. For its part, the CPS argued this was because there was "insufficient evidence" to take the case to court. The cleric was convicted of six counts of soliciting to murder, three counts of using threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, one count of possessing threatening, abusive or insulting recordings, and one count of possessing a document containing information likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism. According to an Egyptian security source speaking on customary condition of anonymity, MI5 and Special Branch personnel regularly interviewed El-Masry during the period when the CPS claimed there wasn't enough evidence to obtain a conviction. A senior French intelligence chief also blasted the UK for failing to take action against El-Masry for years, despite evidence that he was involved in terrorism. Diaa Rashwan, a political analyst at Al-Ahram's Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, argued that El-Masry's conviction actually puts the British system on trial more than the preacher himself. British police, Rashwan said, knew where El-Masry was and what he was doing for more than ten years, but only chose to prosecute him now, after "weighing the risks and benefits" of pinning him down. Arabic satellite channel Al-Arabiya's General Manager Abdel-Rahman El-Rashed said that various British officials in consecutive UK governments allowed El-Masry and other radicals to remain on their soil during the early 1990s under the pretext of political asylum. They "are the ones who should be charged for admitting extremists with dangerous criminal records, who adopt clearly antagonistic cultures and hazardous political programmes, into the country, and allowing them to work," El-Rashed said. British authorities were often warned that this kind of a policy was a "major mistake." Unless the UK quickly expels all active extremists with political programmes, El-Rashed said, "it will be destined for everlasting problems." Other political experts interviewed by Al-Ahram Weekly see El-Masry's conviction as a manifestation of Blair's seriousness about mending loopholes in the nation's asylum laws, which have for decades prevented the UK from extraditing suspects wanted in their countries of origin for terrorist related offenses. Following the 7/7 attacks, said Al-Ahram political analyst Nabil Abdel-Fatah, "it became clear that the UK itself was becoming an Al-Qae'da target, and hence action needed to be taken." The guilty verdict, Abdel-Fatah said, was taken by a "jury that was definitely affected" by last year's London bombings, "and the sentence was passed and toughened within the limits of the law." In London, Shadow Home Secretary David Davis urged an investigation into why it took so long to prosecute El-Masry, when adequate legislation already existed to secure a conviction. Davis also described claims that adequate laws were not available to prosecute El-Masry earlier as "nonsense", since "six of Abu-Hamza's convictions were under the 1861 Offences against the Person Act, three were under the 1986 Public Order Act, and only the least important charge was under the 2000 Terror Act -- which in any case would have allowed for his prosecution in 2001, rather than 2005." Hence, he argued, the only reason El-Masry was prosecuted was because the US had sought his extradition. The preacher was arrested and charged in May 2004 following a US request for his extradition on charges of seeking to set up a terrorist training camp in Oregon. A statement released by Scotland Yard said El-Masry was first arrested on 15 March 1999, for conspiracy to kidnap, and was subsequently released without further action after the Treasury Counsel advised that there was insufficient evidence to provide a realistic prospect of conviction. There were also a number of complaints about comments made by the cleric between 1999 and 2004, the statement said, all of which were thoroughly investigated; in all cases, however, there was either no offence committed or insufficient evidence. A joint Metropolitan police/CPS statement said "the key evidence for the recent trial was the result of three police seizures of evidence; two in 2003 relating to other anti-terrorist investigations by two separate police forces, and the third in May 2004 from Abu- Hamza's own address. The overwhelming bulk of the evidence in the trial came from the May 2004 seizure -- and hence was the CPS' decision to prosecute taken in October 2004." The 47-year-old, Egyptian-born El-Masry denied all charges, alleging that his trial was "politically motivated; he accused prosecutors of trying to put "an idea" on trial, and make a case out of nothing. In Beirut, radical Islamic cleric Omar Bakri, formerly based in the UK, described El-Masry's trial as "another unjust and unfair act against Muslims." Bakri, who had taken refuge in Britain for many years, fled the country last year for Lebanon in fear of being prosecuted under tougher new UK anti-terror laws. UK security bodies said the trial was about "El-Masry, not Islam, not the Muslim community." For years, the security statement said, most people -- including a majority of Muslims -- had found El-Masry to be deeply offensive; "we have now been able to show that what he was saying was also illegal."
