Abu Hamza to Face U.S. Extradition

A British judge on Wednesday, January 31, ordered jailed Muslim cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri to face a U.S. extradition hearing in May.^[1] Al-Masri is currently serving a seven-year sentence in Britain for “fomenting racial hatred” and urging his followers to kill non-Muslims.^[2] He is also charged in the United States on an 11-count indictment with amoung other things, trying to establish a terrorist training camp in Oregon, conspiring to take hostages in Yemen and facilitating terrorist training in Afghanistan.^[3]

Al-Masri, is a former preacher from London's Finsbury Park Mosque, he is a well-known figure in Britain because of his conspicuous appearance - he only has one eye and a hook in place of his right hand, which is the result of injuries he suffered while fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s.^[4]

U.S. authorities want al-Masri to stand trial in the United States, however if he is convicted, he will return to the U.K. to serve the rest of his British sentence before being sent to back to the U.S. to serve any sentence handed down in a U.S. court.^[5]

Hostage taking makes it a crime for a person to, whether inside or outside the United States, seize or detain and threaten to, or conspire to, kill, injure, or to continue to detain another person in order to compel a third party or a government organization to do or abstain from doing any act as an explicit or implicit condition for the release of the person detained.^[6] Violations of this statue will be punished by imprisonment for any term of years or for life and, if the death of any person results, the crime shall be punished by death or life imprisonment.^[7]

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^[1] Abu Hamza to face extradition bid, BBC News, January 31, 2007.
^[2] Caroline Byrne, Abu Hamza Al-Masri Appeal Denied by U.K.'s Law Lords, Bloomberg, January 30, 2007.
^[3] Id.
^[4] U.S. indicts British cleric on 11 charges, MSNBC, May 27, 2004.
^[5] Byrne, supra note 2.
^[6] 18 USCS § 1203 (2006).
^[7] Id.