THE EXTRADITION of four men to the US from Britain on terror charges was frozen by European human rights judges after they sought more time to examine whether they would face too long in prison if convicted.
The four suspects will remain in prison in Britain as the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights wants more time to consider their cases.
Indicted between 2004 and 2006, each of the men is accused of membership of al-Qaeda or of being involved in acts of international terrorism.
Egyptian-born Abu Hamza, a radical preacher who praised the 9/11 attacks on the US in 2001, was convicted by a London court in 2006 for incitement to murder and jailed for seven years.
US prosecutors have charged him with 11 different counts of criminal conduct related to the taking of 16 hostages in Yemen in 1998; advocating violent jihad in Afghanistan in 2001; and conspiring to establish a jihad training camp in Bly, Oregon, in 2000 and 2001. One of the other suspects – Haroon Rashid Aswat, a Briton – is accused of being Abu Hamza’s co-conspirator in respect of the latter charges.
The other suspects – Babar Ahmad and Seyla Talha Ahsan – are also British. They are accused of providing support to terrorists and conspiracy to kill, kidnap, maim or injure persons or damage property in a foreign country.
Mr Ahmad, Mr Ahsan and Abu Hamza face life sentences without parole and Mr Aswat faces a maximum of 50 years’ imprisonment, meaning he would be nearly 78 before becoming eligible for release.
The court found all four applicants’ complaints under article 3 of the Convention on Human Rights concerning the length of their possible sentences in the US were admissible.
Complaints by Mr Ahmad, Mr Aswat and Mr Ahsan about their possible post-trial detention in a “supermax” prison in the Colorado were also held to be admissible, under the provisions on the prohibition of torture and inhuman or degrading treatment.
A similar complaint by Abu Hamza was deemed inadmissible, as he would at most risk spending a short period of time there and only until such time as his state of health was assessed.
The judges found Mr Ahmad, Mr Aswat and Mr Ahsan were at real risk of being held at the ADX Florence prison in Colorado if convicted and their complaints they could be held there for what could be the rest of their lives raised serious questions of fact and law.
The men were arrested in Britain and placed in detention pending extradition on foot of US warrants. They contested their extradition in separate proceedings in the English courts, without success, and their requests for leave to appeal to the House of Lords were rejected in 2007 and 2008.
During those proceedings the US embassy issued diplomatic notes giving assurances the applicants would be prosecuted before a federal court rather than a military commission and would not be treated as “enemy combatants”. The human rights court said there was no reason to believe the US government would breach the terms of its diplomatic assurances.
If classified as “enemy combatants” they would become liable to the death penalty or extraordinary rendition, the practice of secretly sending suspects overseas for questioning.