Western Resistance

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June 3, 2007

US: Islamist's Terrorism Extradition From UK - Why Is It The First?

News from NewsByUs, Associated Press, Deccan Herald, Fox News, New York Daily News reports that Syed Fahad Hashmi was finally extradited to the US on Friday, May 25.

He had been arrested at London's Heathrow Airport on June 6, 2006, suspected of assisting an Al Qaeda terrorist plot, and assisting jihadists in Afghanistan and Iraq. A resident of Flushing, Queens, he was a follower of the Islamic Thinkers Society.  After 9/11, he had invited a member of Al-Muhajiroun to talk at the campus of Brooklyn College, where he had been a student. His arrest last year happened as he was boarding a flight to Pakistan.

Hashmi was also a senior figure in Al Muhajiroun's US network. Investigations by private detective Bill Warner have been crucial in piecing together the links between the British membership of Al Muhajiroun with their counterparts in New York, and their combined links with terrorism. The recent Operation Crevice terrorism trial, which concluded in London on April 30 had heard testimony from a former Al Muhajiroun member turned supergrass Mohamed Junaid Babar.

In 2005, Bill Warner took BBC journalist Richard Watson to the Masjid al-Fatima on 37th Avenue, Woodside, which had been taken over by radicals from Hizb ut-Tahrir in the mid 1990s. Watson videotaped Bill Warner's interview with imam Aqeel Khan, who spoke of the problems of radicals at the mosque.

Mr Warner's sleuthing managed to show that Junaid Babar, who was an Al Muhajiroun member from Queens, had attended the Woodside mosque, and here in 1999 had first met Sajil Shahid. Shahid had founded the Al Muhajiroun office in Lahore in Pakistan, which became a center for ferrying British jihadists (including the five men convicted of the Operation Crevice plot, and also Mohammed Sidique Khan, leader of London's 7/7 bombers) from Lahore to the regions bordering with Afghanistan, where they met Taliban and Al Qaeda controllers.

Mr Warner's investigations also showed that a meeting took place at the Masjid al-Fatima mosque from June 2 to 4, 2000, with lectures given by Sajil Shahid. This three day convention was also attended by an individual called "Brother Fahad", who is Syed "Fahad" Hashmi.

27-year old Hashmi was presented in United States Magistrate's Court on Tuesday May 29, and on the following day he was indicted at Manhattan Federal Court before United States District Judge Loretta Preska. He was indicted on three charges, with the main count involving conspiracy to contribute funds, goods or services to the terrorist group. If he is found guilty at his future trial, he could serve 50 years in jail.

Mark Mershon, assistant director-in-charge of the FBI's New York office, said: "Syed Hashmi aided the enemy by providing military gear to al-Qaida." Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said: "This arrest reinforces the fact that a terrorist may have roots in Queens and still betray us."

Perhaps a year ago, the notion of an Al Muhajiroun member being connected to Al Qaeda would have seemed far-fetched. The revelations of the Operation Crevice trial, where five Al Muhajiroun members were given life sentences for conspiring to blow up venues in London, and were known to have met Al Qaeda leaders in Malakand, Pakistan, now makes such a notion all too credible. The Operation Crevice leaders were also known associates of Mohammed Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer, who were instructed by Al Qaeda to lead a four-man suicide bombing on London's transport system. That attack on July 7, 2005 killed 52 innocent travelers.

This extradition from Britain to the US is the first ever to have taken place on terrorism charges. Why is this so? Britain signed an extradition treaty with the US in March 2003, which would have made extraditions to the US easier. No new treaty was signed to make extradition to Britain more straightforward.

Is this the reason why Britain has stalled on extraditing terrorism suspects? There are at least three individuals who have been requested to be extradited to the US. Hook-handed preacher of hate Abu Hamza was subjected to a US extradition order in May 2004, connected with his alleged attempts to set up a terror training camp at Dog Cry Ranch, Oregon in 1999. Currently, Hamza is in Belmarsh jail, after being given a seven-year jail term for soliciting murder on February 7, 2006. He has fought the extradition request by trying to have his UK conviction overturned, a strategy which was rejected outright by the House of Lords on January 31. The Lords' decision should make his extradition more likely.

Another person who was given a US extradition request in May 2004 in connection with the Bly, Oregon, training camp plans was Haroon Rashid Aswat, who also knew the Operation Crevice cell members. On January 5, 2006, Bow Street Magistrates Court ruled that his extradition to the US could go ahead. One factor used by Aswat was his claim that he would be tried as an "enemy combatant". The US has given assurances tat he will be tried by a federal court.

However, Haroon Rashid Aswat's battle to challenge the extradition lasted longer than the Bow Street court, which had been in existence for 271 years and oversaw the trials of Oscar Wilde and Dr Crippen. The US accuses him, as well as planning to set up a terror training camp, of being a member of Al Qaeda, and has used websites to incite murder, and to raise money for Islamic insurgents in Afghanistan and Chechnya. On July 13, 2006 Aswat appeared via a videolink at Bow Street. His counsel, Edward Fitzgibbon QC argued that Aswat's human rights would be abused in the US. At the same time, Fitzgibbon was also supporting the case of another man wanted in the US - Babar Ahmad from Tooting in south London.

On July 19, Bow Street Magistrates Court closed, but the arguments against extradition have continued. Babar Ahmad, now aged 32, has been indicted on charges of supporting terrorism, conspiring to kill Americans, and maintaining a website used to fund terrorists. He has been in custody in the UK since he was arrested on August 2004.

On May 17 2005, judge Timothy Workman had declared that Babar Ahmad could be extradited to the US. On November 16, 2005 Charles Clarke, who then had been the Home Secretary, had approved the extradition of Ahmad.

He ran several websites, which were used to recruit terrorists. The most important of these was Azzam.com, which recruited people for al-Qaeda, the Taliban and Chechen Islamist separatist organizations. The website also supplied gas masks, night-vision goggles and camouflage clothing.

On July 18, 2006, 26-year old Syed Talha Ahsan was arrested at his home in Tooting, after he was indicted by a federal court in Connecticut. A federal indictment had been made against Babar Ahmad from Connecticut in October 2004, on virtually identical charges. It appears that Syed Talha Ahsan is connected with Babar Ahmad's internet recruitment drives. Ahsan is also charged with setting up terrorists in temporary housing in Britain, and shortly before 9/11, 2001, he owned a classified US Navy document which revealed troop movements. Ahsan and Ahmad are alleged by prosecutors to have run their pro-jihadist websites from 1998 to 2002.

Connecticut district attorney Kevin O'Connor said of Ahsan's case: "These charges are the result of several years of investigative work by ICE and FBI agents in New Haven, NCIS agents, and several additional law enforcement partners here in the United States and overseas."

The Human Rights Act 1998, introduced by Tony Blair, introduced the terms of the 1950 European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) into British law. This has been used by Islamists as a tool to prevent deportations and extraditions. Additionally there are issues of incompetence and unwillingness to assist other nations which have been the hallmark of Britain's dealing with extradition requests connected with terrorism.

The worst case of delaying of an extradition process concerned French/Algerian terrorist Rachid Ramda, who was held in British custody for ten years before finally being extradited to France. Ramda was extradited on December 1, 2005. In 1993, he was sentenced to death in absentia by an Algerian court for a terror attack at Algiers airport, in which 9 people died and 123 were injured.

Ramda was wanted in France for his involvement in a series of attacks upon the Paris Metro (subway). On March 29, 2006 he was found guilty of financing three Metro bombings and was given a jail sentence of ten years. In April 2007 it was announced that Ramda will stand trial for being directly involved in the worst of the Metro bombings, which took place at the St Michel Metro station on July 25, 1995. 8 people died and 87 were injured. The explosive device was contained within a glass vessel packed with nails. Victims suffered horrendous lacerations.

Britain's Home Office has in one case been so negligent that an Italian terrorism trial had to be called off. Libyan-born Farj Hassan Faraj was wanted in Milan, Italy. He was accused of plotting bomb attacks, and had been in custody in Britain since May 2002. Italy has a statute of limitations, meaning that a trial must take place three years after charges are made. Britain's incompetent Home Office allowed Faraj to remain in custody beyond this deadline. As a result, in October 2005, the MiIan trial collapsed.

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at June 3, 2007 7:57 PM

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Posted by: USpace at June 3, 2007 11:36 PM

Posted by: Giraldus Cambrensis at June 4, 2007 2:04 AM

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