Homophobic Islamic cleric to be extradited to US
Muslim cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri is be extradited to the United States to face terrorist charges, the Home Secretary has announced.
In 2006 he was convicted and jailed for seven years by a British court on charges of inciting murder and race hate.
His numerous lectures and sermons targeted homosexual vicars, the tourist industry, the Royal Family and women in bikinis.
Today Home Secretary Jacqui Smith signed his extradition order, which had been approved by magistrates in November.
US authorities want to put Hamza on trial for allegedly running a terrorist “training camp” in Oregon between 1998 and 2000.
He faces additional charges of funding terrorism and conspiring to take hostages.
The preacher has in the past claimed that Zionists kept files on how gay politicians in order to bribe them and that AIDS had been sent as a curse on homosexuals:
“They have a common punishment amongst them and they have the virus to run after them wherever they go.”
Hamza said homosexual priests had no right to preach and transsexuals are cursed:
“Men who imitated women, or women imitating men, were cursed.
“Now if a woman is also trying to build muscles and decides to grow a moustache or cut her hair short or she wear suits from Lord Jones what will the next be?
“She will be picked by another woman.”
He declared if the state did not stop homosexuality “some people have to stop it. People will be killed, no problem.”
Sources close to the Metropolitan Police believe the Finsbury Park mosque where he preached was “linked to literally dozens of terrorist plots around Europe and beyond.”
In February 2006 a jury at the Old Bailey convicted Hamza, 47, of encouraging followers to kill non-Muslims in speeches at his London mosque, which has been linked to September 11th plotter Zacarias Moussaoui and “shoe bomber” Richard Reid.
They found the one-eyed, hook-handed cleric guilty on 11 of 15 charges against him, including counts of soliciting murder, stirring racial hatred, possessing a terrorist document and possessing threatening or abusive recordings.
He was also found guilty of owning audio and videotapes intended to stir up racial hatred and having an encyclopaedia on terrorism, listing Big Ben, the Eiffel Tower and the Statue of Liberty as possible terrorist targets.
Judge Anthony Hughes told the former imam that he helped to persuade his followers that they had a “moral and religious duty” to kill.
Abu Hamza is currently being held at Belmarsh high security prison, where he complained about being assigned a gay nurse.
In June 2007 his lawyers wrote to the Prison Service demanding a replacement, claiming his reliigous human rights are being breached by being assisted by a homosexual.
The prison service said it does not discriminate on grounds of sexuality and refused to comment on individual prisoners.
