The UK's compliance with US administration demands in the "war on terror" might be unlimited, says Jailan Halawi For more than a decade, Egypt has been requesting that the United Kingdom hand over people it believes are militant Islamists taking refuge on British soil, yet such requests have always been ignored either under the pretext of "insufficient evidence" or for fear of maltreatment since Egypt exercises capital punishment and has a record of allegedly obtaining confessions under duress. Similar requests from other Arab countries asking for the extradition of people believed to have been involved in terrorist attacks carried out on their territory from their place of residence in the UK have always met with the same response: "Britain has a fixed set of standards governing human rights that it upholds when contemplating such requests, and it cannot jeopardise this by handing such elements over to countries where they might face torture or the death penalty." Such a stance, however, now seems to be softening, if not to cater to Egyptian and Arab requests. Instead, Britain is softening its stance as a result of the US administration's new set of standards governing its global "war on terror". As US President George W Bush has said, in this war "you are either with or against us," and the UK is making it clear that it is "with" the world's sole superpower, even if this means compromising its human rights standards. On 7 February, UK Home Secretary Jacqui Smith approved the extradition to the US of the jailed radical Muslim cleric Mustafa Kamel Mustafa, aka Abu Hamza Al-Masri, who is serving a seven-year prison term in Britain for inciting murder and racial hatred. Born in Alexandria, Egypt, on 15 April 1958, Abu Hamza is the son of a naval officer and a primary school headmistress. He initially studied civil engineering before leaving for England in 1979. Abu Hamza apparently first encountered members of the Mujahideen, or holy warriors, who, backed by the US, emerged to oppose the Soviet Union's occupation of Afghanistan in the late 1980s, when some of these veterans came to London for specialist medical treatment. Abu Hamza became one of their translators. In 1987, he met the founder of the Afghan Mujahideen, Abdullah Azam, while in the holy city of Mecca on pilgrimage. In the spirit of a holy warrior, Abu Hamza packed his belongings upon his return from Mecca in order to seek martyrdom in Afghanistan, where he lost one of his hands and one of his eyes during a de- mining project while working on a reconstruction scheme in the Jalalabad region. In 1993, he returned for treatment to the UK, but left two years later, this time to support Bosnian Muslims during the worst of the atrocities committed during the break-up of the former Yugoslavia. Abu Hamza finally settled in Britain once more in 1997, becoming preacher at the Finsbury Park Mosque in London. While there, his sermons had a reputation for their fiery content, and he reportedly issued leaflets urging Middle Eastern nations to struggle for the downfall of what he described as their "corrupt" regimes. Considering itself to be a platform for the freedom of expression, the UK let Abu Hamza continue with his preaching, while reportedly keeping him and other militants who had been permitted to settle there under the eye of the police and intelligence services. By the end of 1997, Abu Hamza had been questioned on several separate occasions by MI5, the British security service, but without any charges or accusations being brought, apart from verbal warnings that he should take care over what he preached. Only in 1999 was the cleric questioned by Scotland Yard on suspicion of being involved in alleged bomb plots in Yemen, while his son, Mohamed, was jailed in Yemen for three years for involvement in an alleged campaign of violence. Mohamed returned to Britain after completing his sentence in 2002. Meanwhile, Abu Hamza had been accused by Yemen of providing support and resources for a terrorist group named the Aden-Abyan Army, which took 16 tourists hostage in the country in 1998. Abu Hamza reportedly spoke to the perpetrators before and after the attack, which left three British tourists and one Australian dead when they were allegedly used as human shields during a shoot-out with Yemeni rescuers. Since then, the Yemeni authorities have been requesting Abu Hamza's arrest and extradition, yet Britain has denied these requests, saying ] it would not extradite him to a country where he could face the death penalty, which is against British and European law. However, the British security services began seriously to gather intelligence on Abu Hamza, while still not arresting him. Despite the authorities' sealing off the mosque where he preached, the cleric continued his Friday sermons by preaching outside its gates. Such carrot-and-stick tactics between the cleric and the UK authorities continued until 2004. However, when in that year Washington named Abu Hamza "a terrorist facilitator with a global reach", Britain not only arrested him, but pressed further charges against him and then jailed him, before finally approving his extradition to the US despite the US record of torturing suspects in similar cases. It seems that the US extradition warrant brought a number of charges against the cleric into the open. In the UK, Abu Hamza was charged with 15 offences associated with his sermons and with information contained in the Encyclopaedia of Afghan Jihad, which the prosecutor described as "a manual for terrorism". In February 2006, he was found guilty on 11 of the 15 charges and sentenced to seven years in prison. These included six charges of soliciting to murder, three related to "stirring up racial hatred", and one of possessing video and audio recordings which prosecutors said he intended to distribute to incite racial hatred. He was also accused of helping to set up a terrorist training camp in the US and of helping to fund a Jihadist recruiters' trip to a terrorist training camp in the Middle East. Abu Hamza's defence team have since filed many appeals against the warrant for his extradition to the US, these boiling down to three main arguments. First, under British law a number of the allegations in the US indictment were not extraditable offences. Second, too much time had passed since the alleged crimes were committed. And third, the cleric's human rights would be violated if he were extradited to the US, as he would probably be incarcerated in a "supermax" prison, or even sent to a third country where he could be tortured. According to reports in the American press, inmates in US supermax prisons are locked up 23 hours a day in cells measuring between 48 and 80 square feet with no natural light, no control over the lighting in their cells, and no view outside. They have no contact with other prisoners and no meaningful contact with prison staff. Nevertheless, Judge Timothy Workman who rejected the appeals and approved the extradition, reportedly said that while he found conditions in the supermax prison in Colorado to be "offensive to my sense of propriety," he was satisfied that Abu Hamza would not be held indefinitely under these conditions. He further said there were judicial safeguards in the US that would protect the cleric from re- extradition. Such statements are not accurate, however, since in recent years the US has been accused of involvement in cases of the "extraordinary rendition" of terrorist-related suspects, most famously in the case of Osama Mustafa Hassan Nasr, aka Abu Omar, an Egyptian Muslim cleric who was allegedly abducted in February 2003 in Milan, Italy. In such cases, the suspect is secretly transferred by the US to detention centres around the world for questioning. Even bearing in mind the allegations against him, the horrors Abu Omar has recounted of his abduction and rendition remain a major concern for human rights groups everywhere, which have described such cases of rendition as "a flagrant violation of the individual's basic rights and liberties that makes such cases an un-forgivable crime against humanity". A Milan court is still looking into the suit filed by Abu Omar in the world's first investigation into the US extraordinary rendition programme, in which his lawyers are asking for 20 million euros in compensation. Abu Hamza's lawyer, Muddassar Aranai, has also said that he will appeal against the British Home Secretary's decision to approve the extradition order against Abu Hamza, noting that "there are grave concerns about what might happen if the extradition goes ahead. The Americans have said he will not face the death penalty or be sent to the Guantanamo Bay detention camp -- yet how can we be sure?" "I also fear that if he were sent to America he would become a victim of torture... while this might be a popular move with some sections of the public, we have to ask ourselves whether it is morally right, for we have standards in this country that will not be upheld if we extradite Abu Hamza, and whatever people think of him they should understand that." Meanwhile, in another development a prominent Muslim scholar, Sheikh Youssef El-Qaradawi, has been denied a visa to receive medical treatment in Britain. On 6 February, the British Embassy in Doha sent a fax to Sheikh El-Qaradawi informing him that his visa application had been denied. A British Home Office spokesman confirmed that the sheikh had been denied a visa to the UK, describing El-Qaradawi as an "extremist" whose preaching justified acts of terrorist violence or contained views that could foster inter-community violence. However, analysts contend that the British decision in the El-Qaradawi case was also made to please the US, especially the US Jewish Lobby, since the sheikh had approved suicide attacks carried out by Palestinian resistance fighters in defence of their occupied land. El-Qaradawi is a highly respected Islamic scholar of Egyptian descent, who is currently based in Qatar and who has Qatari nationality. He last visited London in July 2004, although he has been visiting the UK for the last 10 years without incident. He is the head of the European Council for Fatwas, Religious Edicts and Research, and president of the International Union of Muslim Scholars. Moreover, the Muslim Council of Britain has made it clear that it considers El-Qaradawi to be a mainstream force against extremism who has put forward the view that Muslims in the West should integrate and become fully active members of their multicultural societies as a religious duty. For their part, the Metropolitan Police Special Branch Muslim Contact Unit in London commented that, "Sheikh Qaradawi has a positive Muslim Community impact in the fight against Al-Qaeda propaganda in the UK, this assessment is also applicable in the context of the wider Islamic world. By taking such action [in denying El-Qaradawi a visa], the UK could turn mainstream Muslim opinion further against the UK and could encourage some to move to violence against British targets.
