Abu Hamza – from Soho bouncer to international security threat

Ex-imam of a London mosque has British citizenship and two of the other men to be extradited to the US were born in the UK
Abu Hamza background
Abu Hamza and four other men are to be extradited to the United States to face charges of terrorism. Photograph: Dylan Martinez/Reuters

Abu Hamza

The former imam of Finsbury Park mosque, in north London, is the best known of the five affected by the latest ruling by the European court of human rights. An Egyptian-born British national who studed civil engineering in Brighton and worked as a bouncer in Soho before arriving at the north London mosque in 1997, the 53-year-old cleric has been in jail in the UK since 2006 when he was convicted of inciting racial hatred and soliciting murder. Among the 11 allegations in the US indictment are claims he was involved in the taking of 16 hostages in Yemen in 1998, and was planning to establish a terrorist training camp in Oregon.

Babar Ahmad

Ahmad, 37, is British and has been held in prison awaiting trial in the US since August 2004 when he was arrested on a US extradition warrant. He was arrested in 2003 in a Scotland Yard UK counter-terrorism investigation and was released days later without charge; he accused officers of assaulting him, and was awarded £60,000 in compensation. The US accuses the former University College London IT worker of supporting terrorism through the now-defunct website Azzam.com, a charge he denies. Ahmad, whose time in prison has been labelled "Kafkaesque" by campaigners, has asked repeatedly to stand trial in Britain.

Syed Talha Ahsan

Born in 1979, Ahsan is British and holds a postgraduate degree of the School of Oriental and African Studies in Arabic. He has been in prison since his arrest on a US warrant in September 2006, and faces the same allegations as Babar Ahmad. He allegedly co-ran the Azzam website, which the US says was used to host extremist videos, raise funds for terrorism, and exhort Muslims to travel to Afghanistan and Chechnya. They also claims the site received classified US navy plans relating to a battle group in the Persian Gulf. Ahsan, whose family has begged for him to be put on trial in Britain, denies any terrorist activity.

Adel Abdul Bary

He is an Egyptian born in 1960 and a human rights lawyer who was for years one of Amnesty International's sources of information; he was granted political asylum by Britain in 1993. He has been held in prison since his arrest in July 1999 on a US extradition warrant. He is alleged by a US court (in 1999) as having supported or been involved in the bombings of US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in 1998. His supporters claim the evidence against him is flimsy, and Bary denies the allegations. He was first arrested in 1998 after the bombings, but released without charge days later.

Khaled al-Fawwaz

Fawwaz, a Saudi national, is also accused by the US of involvement in the East Africa bombings, which killed more than 200 people and wounded thousands. Unlike Bary, he faces 285 counts of criminal conduct, including more than 269 of murder. He has been held in Britain on a US extradition request since 1998, and is accused of having become a key contact of Osama bin Laden in the 1990s after arriving in the UK from Kenya in 1994, allegedly handling communications for al-Qaida through an organisation called the Advice and Reformation Committee (ARC). Fawwaz has denied any involvement with Bin Laden and rejected allegations that the ARC was a British arm of al-Qaida.

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