Abu Qatada: Islamist thorn in Britain's side

Abu Qatada is also said to be a "spiritual leader" to the Al-Tawhid movement lead by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.


Afp November 12, 2012

LONDON: Radical cleric Abu Qatada has for a decade been a thorn in the side of British authorities, who have detained him as a terror suspect and tried to deport him but all to no avail.

Dubbed the "hate preacher" by the British media, the burly father-of-five, who is believed to be 52, was once described by a Spanish judge as being late Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden's right-hand man in Europe.

But the firebrand has only ever been convicted in Jordan, and on Monday he won his latest legal battle in Britain when judges barred his deportation on the grounds that evidence obtained by torture could be used against him.

The judges also ordered his release on bail on condition that Abu Qatada, who stands more than six feet (1.82 metres) tall and weighs more than 280 pounds (127 kilos), obey a 16-hour daily curfew and wear an electronic tag.

Born Omar Mahmud Mohammed Otman in Bethlehem, Abu Qatada is Palestinian by birth but has Jordanian nationality because the West Bank city was controlled by Jordanian authorities at the time.
His early years are shadowy and reportedly involved a visit to the Pakistani city of Peshawar during the Afghan jihad against Soviet forces, although he insists he never met bin Laden there.

Abu Qatada arrived in Britain in September 1993 on a forged United Arab Emirates passport and claimed asylum on the basis that he had been tortured in Jordan.

He gained refugee status in 1994 and in 1998 applied for leave to remain indefinitely in Britain -- even as his fiery sermons found their way into the flat of some of the 9/11 hijackers.

In 1998, he was condemned to death in absentia in Jordan for conspiracy to carry out terror attacks, including on the American school in Amman, but the sentence was immediately reduced to life imprisonment with hard labour.

In 2000, he was sentenced to 15 years for plotting to carry out terror attacks on tourists during the millennium celebrations in Jordan.
Jordanian prosecutors said he had encouraged the plots from Britain -- although the European Court of Human Rights later ruled that evidence from two of his co-accused was likely to have been obtained through torture.

Abu Qatada then disappeared before Britain rushed through new anti-terror laws to detain security suspects without charge in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.
He was eventually arrested in October 2002 and spent three years in the high-security Belmarsh prison in southeast London before being released under a form of house arrest.

In August 2005 he returned to prison as part of a crackdown after the London bombings, and has remained in jail for all but a few months since then pending deportation proceedings.

During his appeals against deportation, the British government argued that he had "long-established" links to extremists across the world, including Al-Qaeda and armed groups in Algeria, Tunisia and Egypt.

Others said to have sought his advice include "shoe bomber" Richard Reid and the "20th hijacker" Zacarias Moussaoui, the only man to have been convicted in connection with 9/11.

British courts also heard he was linked to Al-Qaeda's current leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, and was in "close contact" with Khaled al-Fawwaz, an alleged Al-Qaeda member extradited from Britain to the United States in October.

Abu Qatada was also said to be a "spiritual leader" to the Al-Tawhid movement, led by Iraqi Al-Qaeda chief Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who died in 2006.

Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon has meanwhile called Abu Qatada Al-Qaeda's "spiritual head" in Europe.

Spain has also accused Abu Qatada of being an associate of Abu Dahdah, who was implicated in 9/11, and videotapes of his sermons were found in the Hamburg flat of Mohammed Atta, the ringleader of the attacks.

The appeals by Abu Qatada went all the way to the European Court of Human Rights, which ruled earlier this year that Britain could not deport him after all.

He was released on bail, with a judge ruling that the strict conditions on him must nevertheless include time for him to walk his youngest child to school.

British interior minister Theresa May then ordered his rearrest and deportation in May after saying she had obtained assurances from Jordan that any retrial he faced would be fair.

But the ruling on Monday puts the British government back to square one.

COMMENTS (1)

JSM | 11 years ago | Reply

"even as his fiery sermons found their way into the flat of some of the 9/11 hijackers."

Will a non-muslim be permitted to do this in Pakistan.

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