In 2000, he was sentenced to 15 years for plotting to carry out terror attacks on tourists during the millennium celebrations in Jordan.
Videotapes of his sermons were allegedly found in the Hamburg flat of 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta while a Spanish judge once branded Abu Qatada Osama bin Laden’s deputy in Europe, although Abu Qatada denies ever having met the slain Al-Qaeda leader.
Jordanian Salafist leader Mohammad Shalabi, who is better known as Abu Sayyaf, told AFP this week that his followers were hopeful he would be allowed to go home instead of returning to jail.
“God willing, he will be declared innocent after a fair and quick trial,” Shalabi said.
Detained under anti-terror legislation in Britain in 2002 and held in custody or under tight bail conditions ever since, on the basis of intelligence assessments that he was a spiritual mentor for recruits to Al-Qaeda, Abu Qatada has never been prosecuted for any crime in Britain.
Britain began formal proceedings to deport him in 2005 in a legal fight that the government says has cost more than £1.7 million ($2.7 million, two million euros).
His lawyers took his case to European human rights judges who ruled earlier attempts to extradite him illegal on the grounds that evidence might be used against him that had been obtained by torture.
But while the case was bouncing in and out of the courts, British Home Secretary Theresa May was negotiating the so-called “Treaty on Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters” with Jordan, which she announced in April.
The treaty was then ratified by the British and Jordanian parliaments.
It does not specifically refer to Abu Qatada’s case but May said it should allay any remaining fears about torture-tainted evidence.
“If the court finds evidence that testimony is obtained under duress or as a result of torture or mistreatment, prosecution will not use the testimony and the court will not accept it,” according to the treaty.
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