THE ABU HAMZA ROAD SHOW:The Finsbury Park mosque imam is coming to America.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444813104578018383382981800.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop
For years, Abu Hamza made a career out of denouncing the West—and allegedly plotting terrorist attacks against it—while living in the bosom of the British welfare state.
Since his arrest in 2004, he’s had a second career of sorts: exploiting every available avenue afforded him by the criminal justice systems of the societies he so disdains to avoid incarceration and, lately, extradition to America.
The U.S. first requested his extradition in 2004. On Monday, he and four confederates finally exhausted their last appeal against extradition to stand trial on terror-related charges in America. Abu Hamza had argued before the European Court of Human Rights that the prospect of incarceration in the U.S. federal “supermax” prison in Colorado violated his right against cruel and unusual punishment.
The court rejected this argument, so he will soon take his show to the U.S. There, the man who praised Osama bin Laden in the wake of 9/11 will no doubt once again exploit every procedural nicety available to him. Abu Hamza is accused in the U.S. of trying to establish a terrorist training camp in Oregon and providing material aid to the Taliban, as well as a 1998 hostage-taking in Yemen.
Abu Hamza’s case was heard alongside those of Khaled Fawwaz and Abdul Barry, charged in connection with the 1998 Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed 269 people. Under U.S. law, all of these men enjoy the presumption of innocence and can mount a vigorous defense. We suspect that, as in Britain, they will once again take full advantage of the very legal protections they have otherwise sought to destroy.
A version of this article appeared September 27, 2012, on page A18 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Abu Hamza Road Show.
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