Hamza in plea to be sent to ‘soft’ British jail

ABU Hamza is launching a last ditch bid to return to a ‘softer’ British prison from a maximum security jail in the US.

The hook-handed cleric claims his detention at the ‘escape-proof’ prison in Colorado is a breach of his human rights. His legal team confirmed yesterday that they will take his case to the European Court of Human Rights early next year.

They believe he should be extradited back to Britain so that his family can visit him and he can receive specialist health care. It was not clear who will pick up the bill for his latest legal bid, but it is likely to be British taxpayers.

The Egyptian-born father-of-eight has already run up a bill of up to £25million during an eight-year legal battle to avoid extradition to the US.

Hamza was finally brought to justice when a New York judge condemned him to serve life without parole in January last year. The hate preacher, the former imam at Finsbury Park mosque in North

‘Unfair his family is not able to visit him’

London, was convicted of 11 offences including hostage-taking in Yemen in 1998 that left three Britons and an Australian dead. He also tried to foster militant jihadists in Afghanistan and to set up an Islamist terrorist training camp in Bly, Oregon.

ADX Florence in Fremont County, Colorado, is known as the ‘Alcatraz of the Rockies’ and houses the most dangerous inmates in the US prison system. Hamza spends almost 24 hours a day in solitary confinement in a 7ft by 12ft cell.

He was moved to the supermax jail from the comparatively relaxed Medical Centre for Federal Prisoners, in Missouri, earlier this year.

His lawyer Lindsay Lewis said: ‘There is a strong humanitarian case that it would be better for him on health grounds to be incarcerated [in the UK]. It is also extremely unfair his family is not able to visit him in the US.’