Islamist's Extradition from UK - a background

The Human Rights Act 1998 introduced the terms of the 1950 European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) into British law. This has been used by Islamists as a tool to prevent deportations and extraditions.

by Adrian Morgan

Monday, June 04, 2007

Syed Fahad Hashmi was finally extradited to the US on Friday, May 25. He had been arrested at London's Heathrow Airport on June 6, 2006, suspected of assisting an Al Qaeda terrorist plot, and assisting jihadists in Afghanistan and Iraq. A resident of Flushing, Queens, he was a follower of the Islamic Thinkers Society. After 9/11, he had invited a member of Al-Muhajiroun to talk at the campus of Brooklyn College, where he had been a student. His arrest last year happened as he was boarding a flight to Pakistan.

Hashmi was also a senior figure in Al Muhajiroun's US network. Investigations by private detective Bill Warner have been crucial in piecing together the links between the British membership of Al Muhajiroun with their counterparts in New York, and their combined links with terrorism. The recent Operation Crevice terrorism trial, which concluded in London on April 30 had heard testimony from a former Al Muhajiroun member turned supergrass Mohamed Junaid Babar.

In 2005, Bill Warner took BBC journalist Richard Watson to the Masjid al-Fatima on 37th Avenue, Woodside, which had been taken over by radicals from Hizb ut-Tahrir in the mid 1990s. Watson videotaped Bill Warner's interview with imam Aqeel Khan, who spoke of the problems of radicals at the mosque.

Mr Warner's sleuthing managed to show that Junaid Babar, who was an Al Muhajiroun member from Queens, had attended the Woodside mosque, and here in 1999 had first met Sajil Shahid. Shahid had founded the Al Muhajiroun office in Lahore in Pakistan, which became a center for ferrying British jihadists (including the five men convicted of the Operation Crevice plot, and also Mohammed Sidique Khan, leader of London's 7/7 bombers) from Lahore to the regions bordering with Afghanistan, where they met Taliban and Al Qaeda controllers.

Mr Warner's investigations also showed that a meeting took place at the Masjid al-Fatima mosque from June 2 to 4, 2000, with lectures given by Sajil Shahid. This three day convention was also attended by an individual called "Brother Fahad", who is Syed "Fahad" Hashmi.

27-year old Hashmi was presented in United States Magistrate's Court on Tuesday May 29, and on the following day he was indicted at Manhattan Federal Court before United States District Judge Loretta Preska. He was indicted on three charges, with the main count involving conspiracy to contribute funds, goods or services to the terrorist group. If he is found guilty at his future trial, he could serve 50 years in jail.

Mark Mershon, assistant director-in-charge of the FBI's New York office, said: "Syed Hashmi aided the enemy by providing military gear to al-Qaida." Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said: "This arrest reinforces the fact that a terrorist may have roots in Queens and still betray us."

Perhaps a year ago, the notion of an Al Muhajiroun member being connected to Al Qaeda would have seemed far-fetched. The revelations of the Operation Crevice trial, where five Al Muhajiroun members were given life sentences for conspiring to blow up venues in London, and were known to have met Al Qaeda leaders in Malakand, Pakistan, now makes such a notion all too credible. The Operation Crevice leaders were also known associates of Mohammed Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer, who were instructed by Al Qaeda to lead a four-man suicide bombing on London's transport system. That attack on July 7, 2005 killed 52 innocent travelers.