Terror suspects can be extradited to US says European court The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg rejected the men's claims that they could face prison conditions and jail terms which would expose them to "torture or inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment" in breach of the European human rights code. The five include radical Muslim preacher Abu Hamza, currently serving a seven-year sentence in Britain for soliciting to murder and inciting racial hatred, and Babar Ahmad, a 36-year-old computer expert and alleged terrorism fundraiser who has been held in a UK prison without trial for nearly eight years. The human rights judges emphasised that today's ruling only becomes final after three months, if there has been no further appeal. The ruling was given a cautious welcome by former Liberal Democrat leader Sir Menzies Campbell, who said it would be important to study the detailed judgment. "This decision will do a great deal to restore the reputation of the court but we must be cautious in drawing unjustified conclusions," he said. The detail and reasoning of the judgment has to be carefully examined but perhaps now we can have a rational debate about the role and significance of the European Convention and its fundamental importance to a democratic society like our own. Today's unanimous judgment said there would be no violation of Article 3 of the Human Rights Code - the "prohibition of inhuman and degrading treatment" - as a result of detention conditions the five men might face at ADX Florence "supermax" prison in the US. The length of their possible sentences would not breach their human rights under European law either. Aswat's case was adjourned "as it required further submissions... on the relevance of his schizophrenia and detention at Broadmoor Hospital to his complaint concerning detention at ADX." The judges said that between 1999 and 2006 all six men were indicted on various terrorism charges in America. Ahmad and Ahsan are accused of various offences including providing support to terrorists and conspiracy to kill, kidnap, maim or injure persons or damage property in a foreign country. Hamza has been charged with 11 different counts of criminal conduct related to the taking of 16 hostages in Yemen in 1998, advocating violent jihad in Afghanistan in 2001 and conspiring to establish a jihad training camp in Bly, Oregon, between June 2000 and December 2001. Aswat was indicted as Hamza's "co-conspirator," while Bary and Al-Fawwaz were indicted - along with Osama bin Laden and 20 others - for their alleged involvement in, or support for, the bombing of US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in 1998. Al-Fawwaz had "notably" been charged with more than 269 counts of murder. On the basis of the American extradition warrants, the six men were arrested in the UK and held pending extradition. They all separately unsuccessfully contested extradition, and their requests to appeal to the House of Lords and the Supreme Court were also rejected. The human rights judges said that, having considered all evidence including "specifically prepared" statements by officials at ADX Florence as well as letters from the US Department of Justice, "the court held that conditions at ADX would not amount to ill-treatment." The judgment went on: "In particular, not all inmates convicted of international terrorism were housed at ADX and, even if they were, sufficient procedural safeguards were in place, such as holding a hearing before deciding on such a transfer. Furthermore, if the transfer process had been unsatisfactory, there was the possibility of bringing a claim to both the Federal Bureau of Prisons' administrative remedy programme and the US federal courts. On the jail's "restrictive conditions and lack of human contact," the judges said: "The court found that, if the applicants were convicted as charged, the US authorities would be justified in considering them a significant security risk and in imposing strict limitations on their ability to communicate with the outside world. Besides, ADX inmates - although confined to their cells for the vast majority of the time - were provided with services and activities (television, radio, newspapers, books, hobby and craft items, telephone calls, social visits, correspondence with families, group prayer) which went beyond what was provided in most prisons in Europe. The ruling said that, according to the US Department of Justice, of the 252 inmates in ADX, 89 are in the prison's "stepdown programme," which, the judges said, showed that the five men, if convicted and transferred to the ADX jail, "would have a real possibility under such a programme of moving through different levels of contact with others until being suitable for transfer to a normal prison." The verdict said that, concerning mental health problems, the issue had not prevented Ahmad, Ahsan and Bary from being detained in high-security prisons in the UK. In any case, psychiatric services would be available for them at ADX. Therefore, for four men, there would be no violation of human rights if they were held at ADX. And for the fifth man - Hamza - the court noted that "the United States authorities would consider Abu Hamza's detention at ADX impossible because of his disabilities (particularly the amputation of his forearms) ." The judges acknowledged that, in America, Bary faced 269 mandatory sentences of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, while Ahmad, Ahsan, Hamza and Al-Fawwaz faced "discretionary" life sentences. The judges declared: "Having regard to the seriousness of the offences in question, the court did not consider that these sentences were grossly disproportionate or amounted to inhuman or degrading treatment. There would therefore be no violation of Article 3 in the case of any of these five applicants if they were extradited, convicted and given life sentences. On Aswat, the judges said the adjournment was to consider further possible issues concerning his mental health if transferred to America, including whether his condition would "properly be taken into account in determining where he would be detained." The human rights judges gave the UK Government until May 9 to submit their observations before the case is reconsidered. A verdict in Aswat's case would be given "as soon as practicably possible." Ahmad's father, Ashfaq, said he and his family were "very disappointed" by the court's decision. "The fundamental question remains as to why this matter has even got to Strasbourg, and why Babar needs to be extradited to the US," he said. There has been a serious abuse of process. Home Secretary Theresa May said the Government "will work to ensure that the suspects are handed over to the US authorities as quickly as possible." She added: "I welcome the decision of the European Court of Human Rights to allow the extradition of Abu Hamza and other terror suspects. In five of the six cases, the court found that extradition would not breach their human rights and, in the remaining case, it asked for further information before taking a final decision. Speaking from his home in Tooting, south London, Ashfaq Ahmad said: "Babar is a British citizen accused of a crime said to have been committed in the UK and all the evidence against him was gathered in this country. Nevertheless, British justice appears to have been subcontracted to the US. This should be immediately rectified by putting Babar on trial in the UK and ordering a full public inquiry into the matter. He added: "Babar has already been imprisoned without a trial for almost eight years, something he described in his recent interview to BBC as 'the most unimaginable type of psychological torture'." Mr Ahmad also said that his MP, shadow justice secretary Sadiq Khan, has written to the Attorney General "to ask why his predecessor Lord Goldsmith and the CPS misled us all by stating in 2006 that there was 'insufficient evidence' to prosecute him (Babar Ahmad) in this country when they had not even seen all the evidence." Babar Ahmad spoke to BBC News after the broadcaster won a High Court challenge to secure the interview. In the interview last Thursday, he admitted he had previously fought "battles" in Bosnia but said he believed "terrorism to be wrong." "I am facing extradition to the United States and spending the rest of my life in solitary confinement," he said. Conservative MP Dominic Raab welcomed the court's ruling. "To say that we couldn't extradite serious terrorist players to the US because they may get a long sentence in difficult, tough prison conditions would be ludicrous," he told BBC News. It would be ludicrous as a moral matter but it would also undermine the whole basis for counter-terrorism extradition to the US.