It was his latest victory in the justice system. In early 2005 he was released after almost three years in prison when the Law Lords, Britain's highest appeal venue, struck down a tough anti-terrorism law created largely to detain Abu Qatada. He was soon arrested again pending the deportation procedure.
Abu Qatada's lawyer, Gareth Peirce, and others criticize the program to deport accused foreign militants to be prosecuted in homelands with poor human rights records such as Jordan, Libya and Algeria. They allege that two Algerians were abused after being deported, making official British criticism of the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, seem hypocritical.
Writing last month in the London Review of Books, Peirce said the government had "impermissibly crossed the legal barriers guaranteed by domestic and international treaties." Aggressive counter-terrorism measures make Muslims in Britain a "suspect community" that increasingly believes it is "expected to eradicate its opinions, its identity and many of the core precepts of its religion," she charged.
Home Secretary Jacqui Smith has expressed "extreme disappointment" with the decision to release Abu Qatada. She promised to pursue the deportation and "take all steps necessary to protect the public."
Privately, though, British officials do not sound optimistic about the planned appeal in the deportation case, much less a Spanish prosecution bid that remains in limbo. Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzon indicted Abu Qatada in late 2001 along with several dozen alleged Al Qaeda militants in Spain.
Most of the suspects in Spain were convicted of terrorist activity in 2005, though several were acquitted of the most serious charges of assisting the Sept. 11 plot. The indictment accuses Abu Qatada of working with the convicted leader of the Madrid cell, a Syrian known as Abu Dahdah, to provide support and funds to Al Qaeda militants in Europe, the Middle East and Afghanistan.
Garzon criticized Britain for not acting on his arrest warrant for Abu Qatada.
"If they had sent him to me when I had asked, he would have been sentenced to 15 years in prison like Abu Dahdah," Garzon said in an interview.
British officials say that sending Abu Qatada to Spain would risk losing control of him if the prosecution failed.
There have also been persistent theories in law enforcement circles that Britain would find it hard to prosecute Abu Qatada because he has cooperated with British intelligence, European investigators say.
