Abu Hamza To Be Extradited

And now for some good news: 

The home secretary has signed the order for Abu Hamza to be extradited to the US to face terrorism charges.

Hamza will be extradited within 28 days unless his lawyers appeal against the decision.

Westminster magistrates court in London ruled last November that there was no bar to Hamza’s extradition.

Hamza was jailed for seven years in February 2006 for soliciting murder and inciting racial hatred.

The US alleges Hamza was in contact with high-ranking Taliban and al-Qaida terrorists and aided the hostage-taking of 16 western tourists in Yemen in December 1998 that ended in the deaths of three Britons and an Australian.

He is charged with attempting to set up a training camp for “violent jihad” in Oregon in 1999, and sending one of his followers to an al-Qaida training camp in Afghanistan.

Hamza’s legal team claimed during his extradition hearing that a US prison could endanger his health and give the cleric almost no access to his large family, which could be barred from the country.

But senior district judge Timothy Workman ruled that the gravity of the allegations and the public interest of honouring the extradition treaty “outweighed the inevitable interference with Hamza’s family life”.

After the ruling, Alun Jones QC, defending, immediately announced he would be making submissions to the Home Office. He said he would write to the attorney general urging the most serious offences be prosecuted in the UK on the basis that three UK citizens were killed in the hostage-taking incident, while no American citizens were killed.

But the home secretary, Jacqui Smith, signed the extradition order this afternoon. Hamza has 14 days to appeal.

Defence lawyers fear he could face detention in a notorious US “supermax” jail, without any contact with human beings. The US has assured the UK that Hamza would not face the death penalty or be sent to Guantánamo Bay or other secret prisons where torture is allegedly used.

The US state department said in November it wanted to put Hamza on trial in New York. The ailing 49-year-old cleric could still face a sentence of up to 100 years in prison.

Hamza once ran the Finsbury Park mosque in London, which police claim he turned into a haven for terrorists.

Hamza was jailed at the Old Bailey on six charges of incitement to murder and lesser charges of threatening behaviour with intent to stir up racial hatred and of possessing a document, the Encyclopaedia of Afghan Jihad, which was “useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism”. A source close to Hamza told the Guardian the cleric was an “unwitting informant” for MI5, providing information on jihadists whose views he considered more extreme than his own.

Hamza said in court that during his many meetings with the security services and anti-terrorism officers he believed a deal operated, whereby his activities would be tolerated as long as they had targets abroad.

Supermax? Hang ‘em by his own hook.

 

Source: Guardian Unlimited - UK orders Hamza’s extradition to US

Everybody Loves Hillary

Gotta love this rhebus:

And look! Hillary approves…

Jailed For Java

It was just this past October when Saudi functionaries and legal representatives lauded forthcoming changes to the country’s judicial system, which would bring vast improvements to human rights:

“The new Judiciary Law and Court of Grievances Law were prepared with utmost care and will bring about qualitative change in the Kingdom’s judicial system,” said Justice Minister Abdullah Al-Asheikh, adding that the ministry would soon issue the executive bylaws of the two laws.

Abdullah Al-Hodaithy, deputy justice minister for judicial affairs, said the new laws were passed after the Justice Ministry, the Shoura Council and the committee of experts at the Council of Ministers carefully studied them. 

“Every Saudi can be proud of this cultural achievement,” he said.

Oh yeah? Well, then every Saudi must be proud of this cultural achievement:

A 37-year-old American businesswoman and married mother of three is seeking justice after she was thrown in jail by Saudi Arabia’s religious police for sitting with a male colleague at a Starbucks coffee shop in Riyadh.

Yara, who does not want her last name published for fear of retribution, was bruised and crying when she was freed from a day in prison after she was strip-searched, threatened and forced to sign false confessions by the Kingdom’s “Mutaween” police.

Her story offers a rare first-hand glimpse of the discrimination faced by women living in Saudi Arabia. In her first interview with the foreign press, Yara told The Times that she would remain in Saudi Arabia to challenge its harsh enforcement of conservative Islam rather than return to America.

“If I want to make a difference I have to stick around. If I leave they win. I can’t just surrender to the terrorist acts of these people,” said Yara, who moved to Jeddah eight years ago with her husband, a prominent businessman.

Her ordeal began with a routine visit to the new Riyadh offices of her finance company, where she is a managing partner.

The electricity temporarily cut out, so Yara and her colleagues - who are all men - went to a nearby Starbucks to use its wireless internet.

She sat in a curtained booth with her business partner in the café’s “family” area, the only seats where men and women are allowed to mix.

For Yara, it was a matter of convenience. But in Saudi Arabia, public contact between unrelated men and women is strictly prohibited.

“Some men came up to us with very long beards and white dresses. They asked ‘Why are you here together?’. I explained about the power being out in our office. They got very angry and told me what I was doing was a great sin,” recalled Yara, who wears an abaya and headscarf, like most Saudi women.

The men were from Saudi Arabia’s Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, a police force of several thousand men charged with enforcing dress codes, sex segregation and the observance of prayers.

According to Yara’s account, there is even more to be “proud” of… especially coming from the proclaimed religion of peace:

“They took me into a filthy bathroom, full of water and dirt. They made me take off my clothes and squat and they threw my clothes in this slush and made me put them back on,” she said. Eventually she was taken before a judge.

“He said ‘You are sinful and you are going to burn in hell’. I told him I was sorry. I was very submissive. I had given up. I felt hopeless,” she said.

Yara’s husband, Hatim, used his political contacts in Jeddah to track her whereabouts. He was able to secure her release.

“I was lucky. I met other women in that prison who don’t have the connections I did,” she said. Her story has received rare coverage in Saudi Arabia, where the press has been sharply critical of the police.

Source: SUSRIS - Reform Set to Revolutionize Justice System

Source: Times Online - Religious poliuce in Saudi Arabia arrest mother for sitting with a man