Radical Muslim cleric Abu Qatada has been awarded 2,500 pounds (3,600 dollars) in compensation by the European Court of Human Rights. The court's judges ruled on Thursday that his detention without trial in the United Kingdom under anti-terrorism laws had breached his human rights.
After his arrest last year, he was subjected to a domestic curfew and then detained in London's Belmarsh high security prison.
On Wednesday, the upper house of the British parliament , sitting as Britain's highest court, unanimously ruled that Abu Qatada could be deported from the UK to his native Jordan where he faces jail for terrorism....
The 48-year-old cleric, once described by a judge as 'Osama Bin Laden's right-hand man in Europe' is still in London's Belmarsh prison. Britain's interior ministry has long campaigned for Qatada's deportation....
Rights groups Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch criticised the Brtitish ruling, saying there was a real risk that Qatada would be tortured.
Qatada was first arrested in the wake of Al-Qaeda's 9/11 attacks on the United States amid allegations that he was one of the most influential Islamist preachers in Europe.
The Jordanian father-of-five, whose real name is Omar Mahmoud Mohammed Othman, claimed asylum when he arrived in Britain in September 1993 on a forged passport.
Qatada issued a 1995 fatwa or religious edict justifying the killing of converts from Islam, their wives and children in Algeria.
In a 1999 sermon he called for the killing of Jews and praised attacks on Americans. The same year, Qatada was convicted in his absence of planning terrorist attacks in Jordan.
(London Daily Telegraph Online, Radical Muslim cleric Abu Qatada faces terror charge deportation, 8:52AM GMT 18 Feb 2009).
