Bin Laden suspects fight extradition

The men are wanted in connection with the Kenyan US embassy bombing

Lawyers have gone to the High Court to try to prevent the extradition to the US of three alleged associates of terrorist leader Osama Bin Laden.

London-based businessman Khalid al Fawwaz, 37, and Egyptians Ibrahim Eiderous, 39, and Adel Abdul Bary, 42, were arrested more than two years ago on international warrants.

They are wanted in association with the 1998 US embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, in which 231 people died.

Mr al Fawwaz has denied any involvement with Bin Laden and denies the Advice and Reformation Committee with which he was connected was the UK arm of Bin Laden's al Qaeda terror organisation.

He was living with his wife and three children in north London before his arrest on a New York court indictment.

He is charged with conspiring with Bin Laden and others to murder Americans abroad.

US extradition powers questioned

Last November, judges rejected his attempt in the High Court to avoid extradition saying evidence pointed "sufficiently strongly to Mr al Fawwaz's involvement in the conspiracy to amount to a prima facie case which will have to be met at trial".

His lawyers claim the English courts had no power in law to extradite him to America because of a lack of evidence and the fact that the alleged offences were not committed within the geographical territory of the US.

The US government submission notes that Mr al Fawwaz is charged with agreeing with Bin Laden and others, between January 1993 and September 1998, that US citizens would be murdered in the US and elsewhere.

The men are accused of bombing the US embassy in Tanzania

It also goes on to suggest that bombs would be planted and exploded at US embassies and other US installations and that American diplomats and other internationally protected persons would be murdered.

After the embassy bombings, Mr al Fawwaz was connected to the claims of responsibility that were sent to worldwide news agencies from London, the US case claims.

The US government submits in the document that it is "beyond argument" that the alleged offence was within the jurisdiction of the US.

It says: "Criminal law is always concerned with the ability to try and punish offenders.

"Extradition is the means by which offenders are brought to justice.

"There is no sensible reason for limiting a state's ability to try offences only occurring in the territory of the state".