LONDON: Abu Hamza, the hook-handed cleric convicted of terrorism offenses, is attempting to return to the UK.
The Egyptian, who was installed at Finsbury Park Mosque in London and was featured as part of the Arab News series “Preachers of Hate,” is currently being held in solitary confinement in a maximum security prison in Colorado in the US, where he was jailed for 10 years in 2015 following extradition from Britain three years earlier.
Prior to that, he was imprisoned in the UK in 2006 having been found guilty of inciting violence.
His wife, Najat Chaffe, has called for him to be allowed to “come back home to his family” and has written to a judge in New York asking for him to be transferred.
In her letter, seen by The Telegraph, Chaffe wrote: “The yearning to have him back in our lives has only intensified over time.”
She added: “To witness his reunion with our precious grandchildren and to enjoy quality time together as a family would be a dream come true.”
While in the US, Hamza, whose real name is Mostafa Kamel Mostafa and who is a double amputee and blind in one eye, has complained of inhumane treatment, claiming in 2017 his “degrading” conditions in prison, “confined within a cell-sized cage” with just an hour of recreation a day, breached his human rights, according to The Sunday Times.
The paper also learned, via a 242-page appeal against his incarceration in the US, that Hamza had access to medical professionals almost daily while in Belmarsh prison in the UK, but complained that without similar treatment in the US, “the stumps in both arms are subject to regular outbreaks of infection, which have been increasing in severity.”
At the time, Hamza’s lawyers claimed the conditions at ADX Florence jail in Colorado where he is being held breached Article 3 of the Human Rights Act prohibiting torture and inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
One of his lawyers, Michael Bachrach, told The Sunday Times that Hamza “would go back to Belmarsh in a second if he could.”
Bachrach added: “We strongly believe that the conditions of his confinement violate the expectations of the European Convention on Human Rights and the promises that were made by the US government to the (British and European) courts as part of the extradition process.”
