European Human Rights Court to Extradite Five "Terror Suspects" to U.S.
ADX Florence Supermax Facility – Colorado
On Tuesday, the European Court of Human Rights issued a ruling permitting the United Kingdom to extradite to the United States six men suspected by the U.S. of committing acts of terrorism.
The principal issue in the case and the one that attracted the attention of civil rights groups around the world is whether reports of harsh conditions and physical deprivation of suspected terrorists at prisons in the United States would influence the court’s ruling. Apparently, it did not. Specifically, the Court informed the government of the United Kingdom that there would be “no violation of Article 3 (prohibition of inhuman and degrading treatment) of the European Convention on Human Rights as a result of conditions of detention at ADX Florence (a “supermax” prison in the United States)....”The case at bar involved six alleged terrorists: Babar Ahmad, Haroon Rashid Aswat, Syed Tahla Ahsan, Mustafa Kamal Mustafa (known more commonly as Abu Hamza), Adel Abdul Bary and Khaled Al-Fawwaz, all of whom were being detained in the U.K. pending the European court’s ruling. Between 1999 and 2006 each of the six men was indicted on various terrorism charges in the United States. Ahmad and Ahsan are accused of several criminal acts, including providing material support to terrorists and “conspiracy to kill, kidnap, maim or injure” people or property in a foreign country.
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