Abu Hamza, the notorious hate preacher, has appeared in court in New York after finally losing his extradition battle.
Philiip Sherwell and Daniel Bates
The Telegraph [UK]
06 Oct 2012
A few streets from the scene of the September 11 attacks that he hailed as “a towering day in history”, Abu Hamza was in a New York courtroom on Saturday night facing terrorist charges.
The one-eyed Islamic preacher appeared in the dock minus the hook that he has used since his hands were blown off by a bomb after US officials ordered it to be removed them for security reasons.
He stood in the dock, the stumps of his arms protruding from a navy blue jumpsuit. During the hearing, in which he did not enter a plea, his lawyers asked for the return of his prosthetics, saying they were essential for him to “function in a civilised manner”.
Hamza, whose fiery sermons helped to inspire one of the September 11 plotters, and four other alleged terrorist suspects were flown into the United States from RAF Mildenhall, Suffolk, in the early hours of Saturday after losing their long and expensive battles against extradition from Britain.
Their arrival on American soil was the cause of as much delight to US officials as it was relief to British ministers, who had long been frustrated in attempts to extradite the men by European courts.
The accused were “at the nerve centres of Al Qaeda’s ‘terror networks’ and will finally face justice”, said Preet Bharara, the US district attorney who will lead the prosecution in New York.
Hamza, 54, an Egyptian-born naturalised Briton who once worked as a London nightclub bouncer, is being held in the maximum-security “terror wing” of the Metropolitan Correctional Centre (MCC) with Adel Abdel Bary, 52, and Khaled al Fawwa, 50…
The article continues at The Telegraph.
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