Old photo of Abu Hamza al-Masri, prior to losing an eye in an explosion (photo credit: Wikipedia.)

Suspected terrorists Abu Hamza al-Masri, Babar Ahmad, Syed Talha Ahsan, Adel Abdul Bary and Kaled al Fawwaz are on their way to America, having finally been extradited to the United States. They were transferred from Long Lartin prison in Worchestershire to an airfield in Suffolk where they were handed over to American agents on Friday morning.

The original extradition requests for these men were filed between 1998 and 2006. Even with the post 9-11 expedited extradition agreement between the United States and the United Kingdom, these extraditions took six to 14 years. There is another pending extradition, for a hacker who got into the Pentagon and did about a million dollars in damage back in 2001, and his extradition has been running the process since 2006.

Wow, that makes the 2½ years that Julian Assange was fighting extradition to Sweden look really fast, doesn’t it? And if, as has been explained repeatedly by European legal, it is much easier to extradite from the U.K. than from Sweden, if we did try to extradite Assange from Sweden, he would probably be ready for a nursing home before we got hold of him.

As for the five terror suspects, the European Court of Human Rights rejected their final appeal and agreed with all the UK courts that they should be extradited. The final ruling came down this morning and was carried out immediately. They are all suspected of terrorist acts or complicity in terrorist acts against the United States.

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