A reader's Comment says:
The picture of him preaching on that road makes me sick. My grandparents lived there. Thank God they never saw that sight. My grandfather fought in WWII. I wish I could go back and tell him not to bother. There must be so many who died who would never have fought if they known that the British State that they were fighting to save would do this to their descendants and their country.
- Ben , London, United Kingdom, 28/9/2012 14:46
What I wonder is.....why do they feel the need to cover their faces.....? It's not exactly a sandstorm area, Finsbury!
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Hamza farce is a source of real fury to me: Lord Chief Justice hits out at European court over endless extradition delays
- Country's most senior judge speaks as hate cleric Abu Hamza mounts a new attempt to avoid extradition to the U.S. to face trial on terror charges
- Lord Judge points to European Court of Human Rights as institution most to blame, after it took more than four years to finally rule the extradition lawful
The country’s most senior judge said yesterday that the interminable delays in extraditing hate preacher Abu Hamza were ‘a source of real fury to me’.
Lord Judge, the Lord Chief Justice who heads the judiciary in England and Wales, said of the eight-year wait: ‘We really can’t have cases taking that long to reach a conclusion.’
He pointed to the European Court of Human Rights as the institution most to blame for the delay in the extradition of the hook-handed cleric to the US.
'Great public interest': Lord Igor Judge, the Lord Chief Justice, left, has revealed his personal sense of 'fury' at the delays in clearing the extradition of hate cleric Abu Hamza, right, to the U.S. to face terror charges
‘I do not think, if you go through the processes, you will discover that the delays in that particular case, or in many like it, are actually to be levelled at the doors of the courts here,’ the Lord Chief Justice said.
He spoke as Hamza – who has already served a jail sentence in Britain for offences under the Terrorism Act – mounted yet another attempt to stave off extradition. A claim on the basis of alleged new evidence is to be heard by a judge next month.
Lord Judge expressed his anger at the glacial pace of the proceedings during a question and answer session with journalists. He said he was not commenting on an individual case – but made it clear that his remarks referred to the Hamza affair.
‘Any case that takes eight years through a whole series of judicial processes to come to a conclusion – and you have made the point that it hasn’t yet come to a conclusion – is a source of real fury to me,’ he said.
‘We really can’t have cases taking that long. It is not fair to anybody. It is not right. That is all I can really say about it.’
Glacial pace: The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, where judges took four years to finally rule that the extradition of Hamza was indeed lawful
The Hamza saga began in May 2004 when he was arrested on a US extradition warrant. He is wanted in America for conspiring to take hostages in Yemen, funding terrorism, and, between 1998 and 2000, organising a terrorist training camp in the state of Oregon.
Extradition proceedings were on hold between October 2004 and 2007 while the preacher was tried and convicted on British terrorist charges.
In May 2007 a preliminary extradition hearing was held in London. British proceedings ended in July 2008 when Lord Judge himself, sitting in the Appeal Court, said the extradition decision was beyond further challenge in the courts and raised no point of law worth taking to the Law Lords, the highest court in the country, now replaced by the Supreme Court.
Yesterday Lord Judge recalled: ‘I was one of the judges who decided that case in the extradition proceedings…So far as we were concerned, that was the end of it.’
However in August 2008 European human rights judges in Strasbourg said that Hamza could not be extradited until they had considered the case. They did not rule that the extradition was lawful until April this year.
Hamza leading worshippers outside the Finsbury Park Mosque: He has already spent time in a UK jail for offences under the Terrorism Act
A final appeal to Strasbourg was rejected earlier this week – more than four years after the European judges started to deal with the case.
The extradition has now been delayed by a further UK appeal, brought by his lawyers on the grounds that there is fresh evidence to be considered.
Lawyers led by Muddassar Arani have deposited papers at the High Court which say they want a judicial review of a Home Office decision to recall Hamza’s British passport. They say he needs the passport to establish his identity and get legal representation in the US.
The case will be heard at the High Court next week. Lord Judge said: ‘The problem is not that there isn’t a limit on the number of appeals. The problem is that new points keep coming up and new points are taken and then they go through the process.
‘What you need is a process in which all the points which need to be addressed are addressed once and then there is an appeal process and it comes to an end. Any case that takes eight years – unless there is some extraordinary explanation…is unacceptable.’
Lord Judge added: ‘In those sort of cases, alleged terrorist cases, well, actually, there is great public interest in disposing of them fairly, justly, but with speed.’
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