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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neeka who wrote (131745)	8/11/2005 5:08:25 PM
From: KLP	Respond to of 793743

Sheik Facing Deportation From Britain Has Alleged Links to Radical Groups Across Europe Aug 11, 2005 By Slobodan Lekic Associated Press Writer LONDON (AP) - Jordan has convicted him. Spain has indicted him. The United States has frozen his assets. Now Britain wants to deport him back to Jordan. Abu Qatada, the radical Palestinian cleric arrested Thursday under British anti-terror laws, has allegedly maintained links with radical groups in Britain, Italy, France, Germany, and Spain. The 44-year-old sheik, whose real name is Omar Mahmoud Othman Abu Omar, arrived in Britain in 1993 and was granted political asylum. He lived freely here until 2002, when he was arrested under anti-terror legislation passed in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, which allowed the British government to detain foreign terror suspects indefinitely without charge. But Britain's highest court ruled that legislation unlawful, and Abu Qatada, along with nine other foreign suspects, was released in March, electronically tagged and required to live under a curfew. Suspicion has continued to swirl around the cleric in Britain and elsewhere in Europe. Abu Qatada has been named in a Spanish indictment as "supreme leader at the European level of the mujahedeen," or Islamic fighters. German authorities accused him of leading the militant Palestinian group Al Tawhid. In France he was alleged to have given spiritual advice to those involved in terrorist plots uncovered in Strasbourg and Paris in 2001. After Sept. 11, 2001, the U.S. Treasury Department named Abu Qatada as a terrorist supporter and froze his assets. Weeks after the attacks, he railed publicly against "corrupt" Western governments and spoke of his "respect" for Osama bin Laden. The British government said 18 videotapes of Abu Qatada's sermons were found in a Hamburg, Germany apartment used by three of the Sept. 11 hijackers. In 1998, a Jordanian military court found Abu Qatada and eight other alleged militants guilty of conspiring to detonate bombs that year outside an Amman hotel, a school, and under the cars of two government officials. The blasts caused no casualties. The Jordanian court, which sentenced Abu Qatada in absentia to 15 years in jail, said the nine men belonged to a previously unknown group, "Al-Islah wal-Tahadi" or Reform and Challenge. In 2000, Abu Qatada was again convicted in his absence in Jordan on charges of conspiring to attack U.S. and Israeli tourists during the kingdom's millennium celebrations. Once again, he was sentenced to 15 years in jail. Jordanian Interior Minister Awani Yirfas said the kingdom has not requested his extradition from Britain. He declined to say if it will. But a Jordanian security official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the press, said if Abu Qatada is extradited, he will be retried. --- Associated Press Writer Jamal Halaby in Amman contributed to this report. AP-ES-08-11-05 1427EDT This story can be found at: ap.tbo.com