Bang on cue for the start of panto season, up pops Captain Hook, one of the most grotesque pantomime villains of recent years.
No, not Captain Hook, of Peter Pan fame. I’m talking about the mad mullah of Finsbury Park mosque fame, currently residing in a federal supermax prison in Colorado. You remember Hooky, poster boy for Islamist terrorism in Britain until he was finally arrested and extradited to America, where he is currently doing life without parole.
Apparently, he’s homesick, poor lamb. Those nasty Yanks are being really horrid to him, keeping him banged up in solitary confinement 23 hours a day.
His lawyers have just filed a 242-page appeal, claiming his detention is a breach of Article 3 of the Human Rights Act, which prohibits inhumane and degrading treatment.
Hook, who prefers to be known as Abu Hamza, but whose real name is (might be) Mostafa Kamel Mostafa, wants to be sent back to Britain to complete his sentence. I bet he does. In Belmarsh maximum security prison, South-East London, he was treated like a celebrity, surrounded by other bloodthirsty jihadists and indulged by the authorities, on account of his various disabilities.
Hook, who prefers to be known as Abu Hamza, wants to be sent back to Britain to complete his sentence
He’s blind in one eye and has two hooks where his hands used to be — the result, depending on which story you believe, of an unfortunate explosion while he was defusing explosives for the Pakistani military. Either that, or he blew them off while making bombs for the Taliban in Afghanistan, or had them chopped off for shoplifting under Sharia law.
Whatever the explanation, no one would deny his physical deficiencies. If he was a dog, he’d be called ‘Lucky’. Then again, if he was a dog, he would have been put down years ago.
Hook was preaching hate long before 9/11 and was instrumental in recruiting terrorists such as the shoe-bomber Richard Reid. But he managed to avoid arrest for years.
Even when he was kicked out of Finsbury Park mosque, he was given a police escort to carry on his incendiary ranting in the street. I assumed that he was only afforded such licence because he was working for M15.
It wasn’t until the Americans demanded his extradition over allegations that he’d helped set up a terrorist training camp in Arizona that the British authorities decided belatedly to feel his collar.
In 2006, he was convicted of a series of terror offences in this country and sent to Belmarsh. Once behind bars, he was allowed to keep his hooks and plumbers were called in to convert the existing screw taps on the wash basin in his cell to special levers.
He was even provided with a personal chiropodist to cut his toenails — a task I filed at the time under What’s The Worst Job You Ever Had? I shouldn’t have been surprised if they’d installed a bidet in his cell, given the obvious, not to say painful, challenges which metal hooks on both hands must pose to the more intimate aspects of personal hygiene.
After serving six years, and following a drawn-out, taxpayer-funded legal battle, he was extradited to the States, where he was found guilty of 11 terrorism charges. He’s now spending his days in a 7 x 12ft cell at a jail dubbed the ‘Alcatraz of the Rockies’.
Oh dear, how sad, never mind.
Lawyers working for Abu Hamza (pictured) have just filed a 242-page appeal, claiming his detention is a breach of Article 3 of the Human Rights Act
He’s been stripped of his hooks and fitted with a spork, a spoon/fork hybrid, to help him eat. (You know, the sort of thing you balance on the side of your plate at Christmas parties. Except in this instance, it’s permanently attached to his wrist.)
Says it all really. At the Belmarsh Hilton, he got regular pedicures. At the Alcatraz of the Rockies, he gets a spork. Hooky’s only allowed out of his cell one hour a day. His lawyers complain: ‘Even during that one hour recreation, however, Mostafa (nice touch, that, Mostafa, bless him) is still confined within a cell-sized cage and is in that cage alone.’
What else does he want in the cage — a budgie to play with? A couple of monkeys? A lion to tame?
He should think himself fortunate the Americans let him back out of the cage at the end of the hour. In Syria, his mates in Izal put prisoners in cages, pour petrol over their heads and set fire to them.
Still, according to his legal team, his conditions breach the terms of the extradition agreement between Britain and the U.S, which promised to respect his yuman rites.
Fortunately, the Americans take a more robust approach to the rights of convicted terrorists. But that won’t stop soft-headed ‘justice’ campaigners agitating for Hook to be returned to Britain, where he can serve his sentence in a manner more suited to Genial Harry Grout in Slade Prison than the Birdman of Alcatraz.
He has never had any shortage of apologists prepared to dismiss him as a harmless circus act. But despite what I said at the beginning, this Captain Hook is no pantomime villain.
He’s the real thing. Who knows how many impressionable young men he managed to radicalise, how many he persuaded to commit heinous acts of terror, to take up arms against this country and our allies?
If just one of his disciples — shoe-bomber Richard Reid — had been successful, and managed to blow up a plane over Detroit, it would have been the worst mass casualty attack in the West since 9/11.
Even if Hamza, Mostafa, or whatever he’s calling himself this week, wasn’t a terrorist mastermind, a Mister Big, he has more than played his part in the war on civilisation being waged by deranged Islamist fanatics. There’s plenty of blood on his hooks.
No one wants him back, not least the vast majority of loyal British Muslims, who are sick of their religion being hijacked by headbangers to justify unspeakable acts of murder and mayhem.
The Americans should throw away the key. Captain Hook can rot in hell.
A gender change op, sir? Fat chance
On Saturday night, trying to escape the carnage of Manchester City’s massacre of Spurs, I started flicking channels in search of some light relief.
I’ve never watched Strictly in my life and had no intention of starting now. Even another Only Fools re-run wasn’t going to cut the Colman’s.
A few pages into the programme guide, my attention was grabbed by a show called Too Fat To Transition on some obscure satellite station.
It featured two grotesquely overweight Americans who had been turned down for sex-change operations because of their bulk.
One was a woman who wanted to become a man, the other vice versa. They were being put through their paces by a personal trainer, aiming to shed enough weight to allow them to undergo gender-reassignment surgery.
It reminded me of that home-grown fat farm show a few years ago, which featured lardy celebs such as former Tory MP Ann Widdecombe.
Come to think of it, one of them — the woman who wanted to become a man —looked a bit like Ann Widdecombe. Or was it the man who wanted to become a woman?
Doesn’t matter. When I stopped laughing, what struck me was that it can only be a matter of time before someone makes a British version.
Tranny Boot Camp. It’s got Channel 5 written all over it.
Best a man can get…
We haven’t had a decent Proof of Identity story for a while. So I’m grateful to Mail reader Ian Burge, who tells me he went into Boots, in York, to buy a packet of Gillette safety razors.
The dopey bird at the checkout asked for evidence that he was over 21.
When he asked why, she said: ‘It’s in case you want to kill yourself.’
‘I told her if I wanted to kill myself I’d jump in front of a bus. What did she think I was going to do, shave myself to death?’
Precisely. Anyway, they’re called ‘safety’ razors. The clue’s in the name.
Incidentally, Ian is 67.
A Mail reader said he went into a store to buy a packet of Gillette safety razors and was asked for ID
A couple who live in a mud hut in North Devon are being kicked out by the council because they didn’t get planning permission.
Kate and Alan Burrows built the two-bedroom structure in 2015 because Kate is allergic to mains water, electricity and wifi. They share their home with an assortment of chickens, goats and geese and get their power from solar panels.
But the local authority has ruled the hut must be demolished and has offered the couple temporary accommodation in a Travelodge.
I can’t help thinking someone’s missing a trick here. We’re told Britain is facing a housing crisis and millions of new homes will be needed.
The quickest way would be to commission a nationwide programme of mud hut building. They’d be cheap, environmentally friendly and self-sufficient.
Why stuff people into bed-and-breakfast accommodation when you can give them a mud hut of their own?