LONDON — Spanish investigators call him Europe's "supreme moujahedeen." British officials froze his assets at the behest of the U.S. government, which believes he is Osama bin Laden's henchman. Jordan has convicted him in absentia for terrorist crimes and accused him in a plot to kill American and Jewish tourists during millennium celebrations.
Abu Qatada is free and living in government-subsidized housing in west London, where he denies the mounting accusations of his ties to Bin Laden's Al Qaeda network to the steady stream of reporters who come knocking at his door. He says he is just a simple Muslim cleric who likes to read books and offer Islamic counsel.
British officials have said they do not have enough evidence to charge Abu Qatada, whose real name is Omar Mahmoud Othman, or to initiate extradition proceedings against him.
But he is widely expected to be arrested under a sweeping new anti-terrorism measure--debated in Parliament on Wednesday and scheduled to become law before Christmas--that would allow the government to hold terrorism suspects indefinitely without trial.
But European investigators and terrorism experts say they do not understand why the British government has not picked Abu Qatada up already.
"The Spanish, the French, the Jordanians all have information on him," said Magnus Ranstorp, a terrorism expert at St. Andrews University in Scotland. "What are they waiting for?"
In Spanish court documents released this week, an investigative magistrate labeled Abu Qatada "the supreme leader of moujahedeen at the European level" and said he was one of the principle contacts in London for the alleged kingpin of a Spanish Al Qaeda cell.
In the documents, Judge Baltasar Garzon accused the suspects in Spain of playing a role in organizing the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, the first such charges made in court in Europe.
He also alleged that the Spanish cell helped finance Al Qaeda members through credit card fraud, robbery and other crimes.
Abu Qatada was instrumental in distributing that money to known terrorists, one of whom is in prison in Jordan, according to the court documents filed Sunday.
The Spanish cell "sent quantities of money to, among others, Abu Qatada" to be relayed to a moujahedeen leader convicted in Jordan in a wave of attacks; an Al Qaeda courier between Afghanistan and Europe; and others, the documents allege.
