Hate preacher Abu Qatada is back in jail after an immigration court revoked his bail.MI5 told the Special Immigration Appeals Commission there were fears the man known as Osama Bin Laden’s ambassador in Europe would go into hiding with underground extremist networks.
But he could be out of top-security Belmarsh prison again within days, it has emerged.
The Law Lords will rule later this month on a claim that deporting 47-year-old Qatada to Jordan would be a breach of human rights law.
If they find in his favour, he will be free to return to his £800,000 home in West London, where his family are living on benefits of an estimated £50,000 a year.
Ministers have been trying to deport Qatada since the September 11 attacks in 2001, but have been repeatedly frustrated by his use of human rights laws.
The Home Office is currently engaged in an apparently last-ditch attempt to send him to Jordan, where he is wanted on terrorism charges.
Earlier this year, Qatada won a Court of Appeal case against removal. The judges ruled that although he himself would not face ill-treatment in his homeland, some of the evidence against him could have been obtained by torture.
He was released on bail, subject to a 22-hour curfew, while the Home Office appealed the verdict to the Lords. In September Qatada was pictured strolling in London with terrorist Yasser Al-Sirri, who faces a death sentence in Egypt for his part in a 1993 car bomb attack.
Much of yesterday’s SIAC hearing was held in secret. But it emerged in open court that a senior Al Qaeda figure, Abu Yahya, had posted a video on a jihadist website that could be interpreted as a need for Qatada to return to the ‘religious battlefield’.
There have been reports that Qatada, who came to the UK on a false passport 14 years ago, was preparing to flee.
Home Secretary Jacqui Smith warned that he could raise funds from his ‘extensive’ network of contacts and said he was experiences at ‘taking successful measures to avoid detection’.
Abu Qatada making a televised appeal from HM Prison Belmarsh before his initial release
Yesterday’s judgment also revealed that Qatada has declared an interest in renouncing his Jordanian citizenship and living in his native Palestine.
But the immigration court said it did not see any ‘realistic prospect’ of this happening in either the near or medium term.
Miss Smith said after the verdict: ‘I’m pleased the court has agreed that Qatada should have his bail revoked. He poses a significant threat to our national security.’
But her officials are braced for defeat in the Lords. Even if the Home Office wins there, Qatada can still appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.
The cleric claims he wishes to leave Britain to live in a country other than Jordan, if one can be persuaded to have him. But he has made no application to the Home Office for help.■
Abu Qatada has been linked to some of the world’s most dangerous terrorists.
Videos of his sermons were found in the Hamburg flat of Mohammed Atta, one of the September 11 hijackers.
He was a spiritual counsellor to Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, Al-Qaeda’s now dead leader in Iraq, who was responsible for sickening acts including the beheading of Briton Ken Bigley.
Qatada provided advice to Rachid Ramda, who was extradited to France for involvement in the 1995 Paris Metro bombing, and was an associate of Abu Dahdah, the leader of an extremist group arrested in Spain in 2001.
He also has ties to Abu Doha, whose Frankfurt terror cell was caught in possession of chemicals, firearms and explosives.
In 1999, Qatada reportedly made a speech advocating the killing of Jews.
When British police stopped him in 2001 he had £170,000 in cash, including £805 in an envelope marked ‘For the mujahedin in Chechnya’.
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