Abu Hamza Wants to Return to London Prison

Egyptian hardline preacher Abu Hamza. (Reuters)
Egyptian hardline preacher Abu Hamza. (Reuters)
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Abu Hamza Wants to Return to London Prison

Egyptian hardline preacher Abu Hamza. (Reuters)
Egyptian hardline preacher Abu Hamza. (Reuters)

Egyptian preacher Mustapha Kamel Mustapha, dubbed Egyptian Abu Hamza, can no longer stand the conditions in US prison and wants to return to Belmarsh British prison.

The former Finsbury Park imam registered an appeal against his detention at the maximum security ADX Florence prison.

The convicted hardline preacher, 59, claims his conditions at the prison violate human rights under Article 3 of the European Convention, which protects people from "inhuman and degrading treatment".

The Sunday Times reported that in October 2015, Abu Hamza was convicted of 11 terrorism offenses and was deported to the US, where is spends 23 hours a day in solitary confinement and is only allowed out of his cell for an hour.

He claims that he is "permitted to one hour per day of recreation time outside of his cell... [and] even during that one-hour recreation, however, [he] is still confined within a cell-sized cage" on his own, according to the newspaper.

Before US prosecutors won their eight-year legal battle to transfer him from the UK in October 2012, Abu Hamza was locked up at Belmarsh, southeast London, where conditions were quite different.

Hamza is a double amputee, blind in one eye, suffers from diabetes, psoriasis and a condition where he sweats excessively and has to shower twice a day.

In his appeal, the preacher argued that he received at Belmarsh daily visits from medical staff, regular doctor visits, and was allowed to mix with other inmates. But, according to the appeal, at the US prison he is subject to regular outbreaks of infections in his hands, which have been increasing in severity.

One of Abu Hamza's lawyers stated: "We strongly believe that the conditions of his confinement violate the expectations of the European Convention on Human Rights and the promises that were made by the US government to the [British and European] courts as part of the extradition process."

The lawyer reiterated that Abu Hamza would go back to Belmarsh in a second if he could.

Asharq Al-Awsat received a letter from Abu Hamza sent to his family two years ago in which he described his confinement conditions in the US prison. He told the family that he is not allowed to see or talk to anyone and they continue to give him canned food.

The preacher was finally granted the permission to speak to his family for 30 minutes once a month, however, he was denied this right recently for failing to submit a urine sample.

Abu Hamza claimed the tube they gave him to provide the sample was very small and he was not able to hold it.

Mustapha Kamel Mustapha, or Abu Hamza al-Masri, was born in Alexandria, Egypt in 1958, the son of a naval officer and a primary school headmistress. He graduated from civil engineering college, and in 1979, he entered the UK on a student visa.

In 1980, he was granted UK citizenship after marrying his first wife, a British Muslim convert, the mother of his oldest son, Mohammed Kamel, who was convicted of being part of a bomb plot in Yemen and was imprisoned for three years in 1999.

Abu Hamza later divorced his first wife and remarried in 1984 a woman whom he had met in a Muslim celebration in London.

Over the years, Hamza has given several different reasons for why he had lost his hands and eye including: a road paving project in Pakistan, an explosion while working in a mine in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, during a fight with the Pakistani Mujahideen, and during an accidental bombing while working with Pakistani military in Lahore.



Thousands Join Effort to Clean Up Catastrophic Spanish Floods

Rescue workers walk, following heavy rains that caused floods, in Paiporta, near Valencia, Spain, November 1, 2024. REUTERS/Nacho Doce
Rescue workers walk, following heavy rains that caused floods, in Paiporta, near Valencia, Spain, November 1, 2024. REUTERS/Nacho Doce
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Thousands Join Effort to Clean Up Catastrophic Spanish Floods

Rescue workers walk, following heavy rains that caused floods, in Paiporta, near Valencia, Spain, November 1, 2024. REUTERS/Nacho Doce
Rescue workers walk, following heavy rains that caused floods, in Paiporta, near Valencia, Spain, November 1, 2024. REUTERS/Nacho Doce

An arts and science center which normally plays host to opera performances was on Saturday transformed into the nerve center for the clean-up operation after catastrophic floods in eastern Spain which have claimed at least 207 lives.
Volunteers went to Valencia's City of Arts and Sciences for the first coordinated clean-up organized by regional authorities, Reuters reported.
On Friday, the mass spontaneous arrival of volunteers complicated access for professional emergency workers to some areas, prompting authorities to devise a plan on how and where to deploy them.
Carlos Mazon, Valencian regional president posted on X on Friday: "Tomorrow, Saturday, at 7 in the morning, together with the Volunteer Platform, we will launch the volunteer center to better organize, (and) transport the help of those who are helping from the City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia."
Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez was due to address the nation on Saturday morning.
In some of the worst-hit areas, people have resorted to looting because they have no food or water. Police said on Friday they had arrested 27 people for robbing shops and offices in the Valencia area.
More than 90% of the households in Valencia had regained power on Friday, utility Iberdrola said, though thousands still lacked electricity in cut-off areas that rescuers struggled to reach.
Some 2,000 soldiers were deployed to search for people who are still missing and help survivors of the storm, which triggered a new weather alert in the Balearic Islands, Catalonia and Valencia, where rains are expected to continue during the weekend.
Officials said the death toll is likely to keep rising. It is already Spain's worst flood-related disaster in more than five decades and the deadliest to hit Europe since the 1970s.