Abu Hamza arrives at RAF Mildenhall for US extradition

La extradición de Hamza


BBC news

Five terror suspects including Abu Hamza al-Masri have left jail to begin extradition to the US after losing the last appeal in a long legal battle.

The High Court ruled Hamza, Babar Ahmad, Syed Talha Ahsan, Adel Abdul Bary and Khaled al-Fawwaz did not show "new and compelling" reasons to stay.

The men left Long Lartin prison in Worcestershire in a police convoy.

Officers from the Metropolitan Police's extradition unit are handing them over US marshals at RAF Mildenhall, Suffolk.

The BBC understands a US Department of Justice-owned civilian Gulfstream jet has been on the tarmac at the base since Tuesday, having flown in from Washington that day.

A second civilian plane, a Dassault Falcon 900, flew into the airbase in the early hours of this morning from Westchester County in New York state, but close to the border with Connecticut, where Babar Ahmad and Syed Talha Ahsan are expected to be tried.

Three police 4x4s, two prisoner vans and a blacked-out police people carrier left the jail at 19:15 BST.

A Home Office spokesman welcomed the decision and said it was "working to extradite these men as quickly as possible".

The US first attempted to extradite Abu Hamza in 2004 over 11 allegations, including of a conspiracy to take hostages and hostage-taking in Yemen in 1998, in an incident that led to the death of four people.

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.

'The sooner the better'

Judges Sir John Thomas and Mr Justice Ousley said in their ruling that there was an "overwhelming public interest in the functioning of the extradition system" and that there was "no appeal from our decision".

Of the long legal battle to send the men - whose extradition requests were submitted between 1998 and 2006 - to the US, Sir John told the court: "It is unacceptable that extradition proceedings should take more than a relatively short time, to be measured in months not years.

"It is not just to anyone that proceedings such as these should last between 14 and eight years."