HANDED OVER: Hooked imam Abu Hamza al-Masri was transported by British authorities yesterday to US custody. (AP)
(AP)
HANDED OVER: Hooked imam Abu Hamza al-Masri was transported (right) by British authorities yesterday to US custody. (
)
Now he’s all ours.
Hook-handed hate preacher Abu Hamza al-Masri arrived in New York early this morning after an eight-year legal battle ended with him getting the boot from Britain.
The one-eyed terror suspect — whose radical Islamic sermons helped inspire Sept. 11 plotter Zacarias Moussaoui and failed shoe-bomber Richard Reid — could appear in a Manhattan federal courtroom as early as today, a source told The Post.
Al-Masri and four other alleged jihadists were transported aboard a Justice Department jet in a joint operation by the FBI and the US Marshals Service.
A plane carrying three of the men arrived at Westchester County Airport at 2:35 a.m. today. The jumpsuit-clad suspects were loaded into waiting SUVs, and a caravan of vehicles left the airport about an hour after the plane landed.
Following the early-morning arrival, the suspects were expected to be locked up in the high-security “terror wing” of the Metropolitan Correctional Center in downtown Manhattan.
The US attorney’s office in Connecticut says Babar Ahmad and Syed Talha Ahsan are scheduled to appear in US District Court in New Haven early Saturday, just hours after arriving in the U.S. at about 2 a.m.
The US attorney office in New York confirms that al-Masri, Khaled al-Fawwaz and Adel Abdul Bary are in New York City. Court appearances are expected later in the day.
Law-enforcement sources said authorities made plans to beef up security and cope with potential threats related to the suspects’ arrival.
Al-Masri, 54, is charged with conspiring to set up a terrorist training camp in Oregon, and with helping kidnap 16 people — including two American tourists — in Yemen in 1998.
The Egyptian-born, nightclub bouncer-turned-imam claims to have lost his hands and left eye while battling the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
He later turned London’s Finsbury Park Mosque into a hotbed of radical Islam before being jailed in 2004 for inciting racial hatred and encouraging his followers to kill non-Muslims.
His fellow travelers include al-Fawwaz, the former London spokesman for Osama bin Laden, and Bary, who are both charged in connection with the deadly 1998 al Qaeda bombings of two US embassies in east Africa.
The remaining suspects, Ahmad and Ahsan, face charges in Connecticut related to Web sites that allegedly sought to raise cash, recruit fighters, and equip terrorists in Afghanistan and Chechnya.
All five had been fighting extradition for years by whining about the conditions they would likely face behind bars in America.
Al-Masri, also known as Mustafa Kamel Mustafa, said it would be “oppressive” to send him to a US slammer because he suffers from depression, chronic sleep deprivation, diabetes and other ailments.
But after the European Court of Human Rights ruled against the men last month, Britain’s High Court said yesterday that they had exhausted all of their appeals.
Judges John Thomas and Duncan Ouseley rejected their bids for last-ditch injunctions, with Thomas noting that it was “in the interest of justice that those accused of very serious crimes, as each of these claimants is in these proceedings, are tried as quickly as possible as is consistent with the interests of justice.”
”It follows that their extradition to the United States of America may proceed immediately,” he added said.
Before the ruling, a small group of Islamist protesters gathered outside the court to denounce the planned extraditions.
A few scuffled briefly with British bobbies, while one grabbed a poster saying “Sling His Hook” from a counter-demonstrator.