LONDON — Police from Scotland Yard seized one of Europe's most prominent Muslim radicals Thursday, arresting Abu Hamza al Masri on a warrant for extradition to the United States amid allegations that he was involved in an attempt to set up a terrorist training camp in Oregon.
Within hours of the arrest in west London, Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft went before reporters in New York and unveiled an 11-count indictment against Masri, linking him to a 1998 terrorist hostage-taking in Yemen and an alleged plan in 1999 to set up a training base for Al Qaeda in Bly, Ore.
The Egyptian-born Masri was already defending himself against the British government's move to strip him of his British citizenship and send him to Yemen, where he also faces charges. Now it appears likely that he will end up in U.S. custody, unless he can convince courts here that he would not receive a fair trial in America.
Britain will not extradite suspects to countries where they would face the death penalty, so the U.S. would have to promise that Masri could not be executed. British Home Secretary David Blunkett said the Bush administration had already made such a commitment.
"We have an agreement with the U.S., which I reaffirmed a year ago, that the death penalty would not be put in place," he told BBC Radio.
However, a Justice Department spokesman in Washington, Bryan Sierra, said no decision had been made about whether prosecutors would seek the death sentence, and he did not confirm that an assurance had been given to Britain.
"There is a point in the process at which any such assurances, if sought, would be addressed. It has not happened," he said, declining to comment about whether the U.S. had provided any informal assurance.
Masri, 47, is a onetime mujahedin fighter in Afghanistan against the Soviet occupation, during which he lost an eye and both hands in an explosion. He gained notoriety after the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon with fiery sermons at his Finsbury Park mosque in north London that lauded the attacks and accused the U.S. and Britain of waging war against Islam.
Since the 1990s, the mosque has served as a magnet for Islamic radicals in Europe. Among those who went there to pray and study were several people whom authorities later linked to the Al Qaeda network, including convicted "shoe bomber" Richard Reid and Zacarias Moussaoui, accused in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks.
