It's been a while since the once-ubiquitous Abu Hamza - the blind-in-one-eye, hook-handed hate preacher who was the imam of London's Finsbury Park mosque - has been in the news, probably because he's been serving time in maximum security prison the ADX penitentiary in Colorado.
Hamza was extradited from the UK, where he was interred at Belmarsh Prison in 2012. In May 2014, he was convicted of 11 terrorism charges including involvement in the 1998 kidnapping of 16 tourists in Yemen, providing material support to terrorists, and attempting to create a terrorist training camp in Bly, Oregon, in 1999.
Now, Hamza is back in the papers after court documents revealed that he claims he was warned about the 9/11 attacks four days before they happened. During a phone call with terrorists in Afghanistan, Hamza said he was told that 'something big will happen soon'.
That's perhaps not surprising, but what is intriguing is that Hamza also claimed his phone had been hacked by British spies at that time. That, of course, raises questions about whether UK authorities were actually aware of the threat and whether they failed to pass it along to American intelligence agencies.
As seen and revealed by The Times, the documents reportedly reveal too that Hamza served as an agent for MI5 and Special Branch and used the codename 'Damson Berry'.
After two years in solitary confinement in the US, the hate preacher has launched an appeal stating that his prison conditions are in violation of his human rights. The appeal comes as a photo emerged of him looking emaciated and sporting a fully white beard and hair.
The picture also shows the double amputee - who is also diabetic and suffers from both psoriasis and a condition that means he sweats excessively and has to shower twice a day - without his trademark hooks.
As The Times reports, the US court documents reveal that Hamza is only allowed out of his cell for one hour a day, and even when he's in fresh air, he has to be kept in a cage with no other inmates.
His lawyer issued a statement that read: "'We strongly believe that the conditions of his confinement violate the expectations of the European Convention on Human Rights and the promises that were made by the US government to the [British and European] courts as part of the extradition process."
He added that Hamza 'would go back to Belmarsh in a second if he could'.
Featured Image Credit: PATopics: Attack, terrorism, 9/11, UK News