£2.75m, the cost of paying bill for Hamza's hatred
ISLAMIC fanatic Abu Hamza was yesterday labelled Britain’s most expensive Muslim firebrand in a “rich list” of hate preachers.
He has set taxpayers back £2.75million in benefits, health care, policing and the cost of his prosecution and imprisonment, a report claims.
Hamza accounted for exactly half the £5.5million identified by the TaxPayers’ Alliance in a table charting public spending on Islamic radicals.
The 50-year-old Egyptian-born cleric, jailed for hate crimes and wanted on terrorism charges in the US, came ahead of Al Qaeda’s European chief, Abu Qatada.
Qatada, 47, who is wanted in his native Jordan for alleged terror offences, has cost the taxpayer nearly £1.5million, it is claimed.
He is followed in the table by the “Tottenham Ayotollah,” Omar Bakri Mohammed, who has allegedly cost £531,000.
This is yet further damning evidence of Big Brother’s expensive tastes
The TaxPayers’ Alliance said the list demonstrates how Labour has been slow to deal with Muslim hardliners despite spending £20billion on surveillance.
Policy analyst Glyn Gaskarth said: “The Government’s Big Brother measures are a costly way of making us less free but no more secure. The Government should target the real extremists rather than eroding the civil liberties of ordinary, law-abiding people and wasting billions.”
Tory David Davis, who is fighting a by-election on Thursday over civil liberties, said: “This is yet further damning evidence of Big Brother’s expensive tastes.
“ID cards, CCTV, the DNA database and other measures are a huge waste of taxpayers’ money on policies that undermine freedom and are utterly ineffective.”
Hook-handed Hamza’s figure includes £1.1million spent on feeding, clothing and housing him, his wife and eight children in a council house.Researchers also estimate that his detention has cost £38,000 a year since his arrest four years ago.
Qatada was convicted in his absence in Jordan of links to terror attacks in the 1990s, and of plotting to plant bombs during the Millennium celebrations. However, last month he won an appeal against deportation and was returned to house arrest at an MI5 safe home. His custody costs have so far added up to £500,000, the report claims.
His appeal cost £500,000, and £1,000-a-week benefits for Qatada, his wife and five children are estimated to have totalled £168,000 between 1993 and 2002.
Bakri is the former leader of Al Muhajiroun, a British Muslim group which praised the 9/11 bombers as the “Magnificent 19.”
Banned from entering Britain, he was paid a total of £300,000 in handouts for him, his wife and seven children. He was also paid £200,000 to cover rent and given a people carrier costing £31,000.
