British taxpayers happy to wave goodbye to Islamist hatemonger

Full Comment’s Araminta Wordsworth brings you a daily round-up of quality punditry from across the globe. After a decade of legal battles, Abu Hamza al-Masri has finally been deported from Britain to face U.S. justice.

Within hours of his ultimate appeal being rejected in Strasbourg, the Egyptian-born Muslim cleric and four other suspected terrorists were on a plane to New York.

The rabble-rousing, bloody-thirsty imam, who lost both hands and an eye fighting the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, is accused of supporting al-Qaeda, aiding a kidnapping in Yemen and plotting to open a jihadist camp in Oregon. He was jailed in Britain for inciting racial hatred and murder from his mosque in North London.

In his last-ditch bid to stay in the U.K., he and the four other claimed their human rights would be breached if they were to be incarcerated in a super-max jail in Colorado.

Not that they had any concern about the human rights of their victims — two of the suspects are to face trial for their involvement in the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in which at least 300 people died.

As The Daily Telegraph’s Tom Whitehead reported, the judges on the Upper Grand Chamber gave scant shrift to the human rights’ argument.
In the landmark judgment, the court concluded that extradition to the U.S. would not lead to inhuman treatment.
It unanimously dismissed claims that conditions in American "supermax” jails were degrading, instead ruling that facilities such as televisions, telephones and arts and crafts actually "went beyond” what was provided in most European prisons. (continue reading...)