Abu Hamza: Hook-handed radical preacher faces US extradition

(LONDON) - With his hooked hand and distinctive appearance, radical preacher Abu Hamza has the highest profile of the five men set to be extradited to the United States to face terror charges.

Born in Egypt, he moved to Britain in the late 1970s and became a familiar sight outside the Finsbury Park mosque in north London in the 1990s as he gave sermons, gesticulating with the hook which replaces one of his hands.

He lost the hand, and suffered injuries to his eyes, while fighting in Afghanistan as part of a "jihad" against the Soviet occupation.

He came to public attention for his alleged involvement in kidnapping Western tourists in Yemen, and the United States believes he assisted Al-Qaeda and set up an alleged terror training camp in a remote part of the northwestern state of Oregon.

Hamza's outspoken pronouncements and his appearance led some British newspapers to dismiss him as a motor-mouthed cartoon villain, not taken seriously by the majority of British Muslims.

But one high-ranking officer in London's Metropolitan Police, speaking on condition of anonymity in 2006, said it was a "mistake" to regard him as a "buffoon".

Even if he wasn't "a leader of the global jihad movement", he had significant influence over his followers, the officer explained.

An indication of his notoriety in Britain emerged this month when the BBC's security correspondent reported that Queen Elizabeth II had asked him in 2004, before Abu Hamza's initial arrest, why he was still a free man.

That year, he was arrested on a US extradition warrant, which claimed he had tried to set up the camp in Oregon between 1998 and 2000.

But the same year, he was also charged with terrorism offences in Britain, including incitement to murder.

In 2006, he was jailed for seven years after being found guilty on 11 of the 15 terrorism charges in Britain.

Following the trial, Scotland Yard released photographs of items seized from the Finsbury Park mosque in January 2003 as part of a separate inquiry into a plot to use ricin and other potentially deadly poisons in Britain.

Items found included CS spray, a stun gun, three blank firing pistols, a dummy gun, a military camouflage suit to protect against nuclear, biological or chemical attacks and a gas mask.

The decision by the High Court on Friday to reject his bid to block his extradition looks set to be the final act in a succession of legal challenges against the moves to send him to the United States.

In February 2010, authorities seized his house in Greenford, west London, to pay off his legal bills, even though Hamza insisted it did not belong to him.

In the High Court, Hamza's lawyers said he had a potentially "degenerative" condition which required investigation by an MRI scan.

He also suffers from repeated infections of the stumps of his amputated forearms and sweats excessively, which means he has to change clothes twice a day, the court was told.