UK Orders Hamza's Extradition to Us

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 honoring 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 offenses 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 "super max" 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 behavior with intent to stir up racial hatred and of possessing a document, the Encyclopedia 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.