The radical cleric Abu Hamza was sentenced to life imprisonment with no possibility of release by a US federal court on Friday. He was given two consecutive life sentences and five to 15 years on nine other counts.
Hamza was convicted in May 2014 of 11 terrorism-related charges, including his involvement in the 1998 kidnapping of 16 tourists in Yemen, providing material support to terrorists, and attempting to create a terrorist training camp in Bly, Oregon, in 1999.
The former imam of the Finsbury Park mosque in London, Egyptian-born Hamza was extradited from the UK to the US in 2012. The cleric’s family made a last-minute appeal to the judge for leniency. “He was a very kind and helpful man,” his wife Najat Mostafa wrote in a letter dated 24 December 2014. “He inspired many people in the community.” Hamza’s son Othman Mostafa, in a separate letter, called him “a wonderful and loving father to his children”. At the US district court in Manhattan, however, judge Katherine Forrest reportedly said that Hamza had shown no remorse, and that “any time he is released the world will not be safe”. Forrest described his conduct as “barbaric, misguided and wrong” and said “it is important to me that you have not expressed sympathy for the victims of the Yemeni kidnappings”. She reportedly described Hamza as “evil”. Preet Bharara, the US attorney for the southern district of New York, which includes Manhattan, said: “Abu Hamza’s blood-soaked journey from cleric to convict, from Imam to inmate, is now complete.” In earlier filings to the court, Hamza’s lawyers claimed that his disabilities – diabetes, severe psoriasis, high blood pressure, a fungal toenail condition and “hyperhidrosis”, a condition which has him sweat profusely, as well as complications from his amputated arms – meant it would be wrong to send Hamza to the high-security “supermax” prison in Colorado. Hamza’s lawyers told the court that the cleric had been having trouble with eating, drinking and hygiene. At a US correctional facility he was fitted with a combined spoon and fork “spork” prosthetic, designed to help him eat, but his lawyers have claimed that Hamza was having difficulty using it. In a petition to the judge, lawyers representing Hamza claimed that a sentence without sufficient accommodations for his physical disabilities would be “barbaric”, and could even count as cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the eighth amendment. But the petition for him to be serve his sentence in a medical facility rather than a maximum security prison was denied by the judge on Friday. He will serve his life sentence – which carries no possibility of parole – at the federal “supermax” facility, ADX (Administrative Maximum Facility) Florence in Colorado. ADX Florence, which is known as “the Alcatraz of the Rockies”, is designed to house inmates who are too dangerous for other facilities, or risks to national security. It is where Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, was housed before he was sentenced to death in 1997, and his co-conspirator Terry Nichols is currently serving 161 consecutive life sentences there.
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