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.



Iran Wants Guarantees Trump Will Not Quit a New Nuclear Pact, Iranian Official Says

A paratrooper carries the Iranian flag during the National Army Day parade ceremony in Tehran, Iran, April 18, 2025. Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via Reuters
A paratrooper carries the Iranian flag during the National Army Day parade ceremony in Tehran, Iran, April 18, 2025. Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via Reuters
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Iran Wants Guarantees Trump Will Not Quit a New Nuclear Pact, Iranian Official Says

A paratrooper carries the Iranian flag during the National Army Day parade ceremony in Tehran, Iran, April 18, 2025. Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via Reuters
A paratrooper carries the Iranian flag during the National Army Day parade ceremony in Tehran, Iran, April 18, 2025. Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via Reuters

Iran told the United States in talks last week it was ready to accept some limits on its uranium enrichment but needed watertight guarantees President Donald Trump would not again ditch a nuclear pact, a senior Iranian official told Reuters on Friday.

Iran and the United States are set to hold a second round of talks on Saturday in Rome, a week after a first round of negotiations in Oman which both sides described as positive.

Trump, who has restored a "maximum pressure" campaign on Tehran since February, ditched a 2015 nuclear pact between Iran and six world powers in 2018 during his first term and reimposed crippling sanctions on Iran.

In the intervening years, Tehran has steadily overstepped the 2015 agreement's limits on its nuclear program, designed to make it harder to develop an atomic bomb.

Former US President Joe Biden, whose administration unsuccessfully tried to reinstate the 2015 pact, was not able to meet Tehran's demand for guarantees that no future US administration would renege on it.

Tehran has approached the talks warily, skeptical they could yield a deal and suspicious of Trump, who has repeatedly threatened to bomb Iran if it does not halt its accelerating uranium enrichment program, which Iran says is peaceful.

While both Tehran and Washington have said they are set on pursuing diplomacy, they remain far apart on a dispute that has rumbled on for more than two decades.

Tehran's red lines "mandated by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei" could not be compromised in the talks, the official told Reuters, describing Iran's negotiating position on condition of anonymity.

He said those red lines meant Iran would never agree to dismantle its centrifuges for enriching uranium, halt enrichment altogether, or reduce the amount of enriched uranium it stores to a level below the level it agreed in the 2015 deal that Trump abandoned.

It would also not negotiate over its missile program, which Tehran views as outside the scope of any nuclear deal.

"Iran understood in indirect talks in Oman that Washington doesn’t want Iran to stop all nuclear activities, and this can be a common ground for Iran and the US to start a fair negotiation," the source said.

Iran said on Friday reaching a deal with the United States was possible if "they demonstrate seriousness of intent and do not make unrealistic demands".

Top US negotiator Steve Witkoff, in a post on X on Tuesday, said Iran must "stop and eliminate its nuclear enrichment" to reach a deal with Washington.

Tehran has said that it is ready to work with the UN nuclear agency, which it sees as "the only acceptable body in this process", to provide assurances that its nuclear work is peaceful, according to the source.

The source said Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi had told the Americans that, in return for that cooperation, Washington should promptly lift sanctions on Iran's oil and financial sectors.