Extradition 'could take months'
LONDON, England -- Legal experts in Britain say the extradition of controversial Muslim cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri to the U.S. on charges relating to terrorism could take many months.
With lengthy appeals procedures, the average time for an successful extradition out of the UK is now around one year.
"This case could take months and months to sort out," a senior British security source told Reuters.
If he is to be extradited, Washington would have to guarantee the Egyptian-born cleric will not face the death penalty, which has been abolished in Britain.
The new "fast-track" Anglo-American extradition treaty, which came into force at the start of this year, means U.S. officials no longer have to produce in a British court prima facie (first impression) evidence of an offence -- just a statement of facts of the alleged offence.
The U.S. hopes it can use the treaty to extradite Abu Hamza without lengthy legal wrangling that has dogged other cases, the UK's Press Association says.
The treaty was signed by UK Home Secretary David Blunkett and U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft last year and replaces one agreed in 1972 and ratified in 1976.
By removing the need for presentation of a prima facie case, procedures between the UK and U.S. are now more in line with extradition arrangements to European countries.
The procedures still requires that a detailed statement of the facts of the case be provided. Any crime carrying a jail penalty of at least one year is extraditable under the treaty.
But there could be complications.
It emerged Wednesday that Britain was also pursuing a case against Abu Hamza. The Crown Prosecution Service told Reuters that effectively the Americans had got there first.
"The position as of yesterday is that we were considering some material that the police had sent to us and were looking to see if there were grounds on which charges could have been brought," a spokeswoman said.
Yemen, where Abu Hamza's son has served time in prison on terrorism charges, has also long sought his extradition.
"We have evidence he has been involved in terrorist attacks that took place in Yemen in 1998," the country's Foreign Minister Abubakr al-Qirbi told BBC radio.
U.S. hopes to win a speedy extradition to America first will be hampered by the fact that Abu Hamza's lawyers will have two chances of appeals during the legal process, PA says
Geoff Gilbert, professor of law at the University of Essex, eastern England, told Reuters there could be a long legal argument if Abu Hamza challenges the extradition request.
"If he wants to challenge it, I would say it would take somewhere between nine months and two years," he said. If Britain also prosecutes, this would sink the case even further into a legal quagmire, he added.
British officials could not immediately clarify whether the U.S. or UK allegations against him would take precedence, Reuters reported.
When the new extradition measures were instituted, Blunkett, the home secretary, said: "It will mean much closer co-operation and cut out much of the paperwork which has led to unnecessary delays in the current system and allowed criminals to exploit loopholes and deliberately thwart justice."
One certainty from the new arrangements is that Abu Hamza could not be sentenced to death if extradited to the U.S. Blunkett insisted that in death penalty cases extradition would be refused unless an assurance had been received that no death sentence would be carried out.
