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Abu Hamza

I can confirm that that was absolutely not the case; his assets were not frozen by the Government in 2002. That is accepted wisdom, and I shall come to it. There is excessive evidence that Hamza was living in that property in Aldbourne road. Everyone accepted it, it seems, except the council and the Department for Work and Pensions, which were housing the family and paying them benefits. The council claimed that his wife was estranged and that describing her as Hamza’s wife"““elicits a negative emotional response””." The fact that the children whose details were added to the application form all bore the surname Mustafa Kemal—the same as that of Abu Hamza—was, the council said, ““of little evidential weight””. Investigations should have been triggered into the housing benefit, the income support and the council tax benefit. However, in its defence, the council said that the primary duty to investigate Hamza and his family, and to look at past and present benefit claims, lay with the Department for Work and Pensions. It can be established beyond reasonable doubt that Hamza was living in Aldbourne road. Indeed, the police’s dawn raid to arrest him in May 2004 found him there, and he, and/or his family, was the beneficiary of an expensive flat in Adie road or the proceeds from its sale. Given that Hamza might be released next year, we do not have a moment to lose. That brings me to the freezing of terrorists’ assets. A year ago, we were told by the Chancellor that"““the Treasury…had to become a department for security…I have found myself immersed in measures designed to cut off the sources of terrorist finance. And I have discovered that this will require an international operation using modern methods of forensic accounting as imaginative and pathbreaking in our times as the…enigma codebreakers at Bletchley Park””." I hope that his forensic accounting is more effective than that used by the former Labour council or the Department for Work and Pensions. I am not going to re-rehearse the whole fiasco of the emergence, a few months back, of the fact that Hamza, despite being incarcerated in Belmarsh and despite the Chancellor’s order to freeze his assets in April 2002, managed to transfer the Adie road property to his son, who has himself been convicted of terrorist offences. I have already established that Hamza needs to be watched carefully when it comes to finances. Indeed, he threw down the gauntlet to the Chancellor when his assets were frozen in 2002, telling The Sunday Times on 21 April 2002:"““I don’t have anything in the bank to freeze. So where are they going to get it from?””" At almost exactly the same time, the Charity Commission suspended Hamza from the mosque, partly because of financial irregularities. The alarm bells should have been ringing, but a year later he was allowed to transfer the Adie road flat to his son—and at nil value, it seems. This was no ordinary son, but a convicted terrorist. Aged 17, he was jailed in Yemen in 1999 for plotting a bombing campaign against the British consulate, a western-owned hotel and the Anglican church in Aden. After leaving prison, he was deported to Britain. According to the Yemeni court case, Hamza paid for his son’s flight there and gave him £3,000 in cash to help him to carry out the offences. Hamza himself is wanted in Yemen for similar terrorist offences that led indirectly to the death of two Britons. That same son got a job on the tube after 7/7. London Underground said that he was allowed to work as"““he has no criminal convictions in the UK.””" So, despite all the assurances and the fact that Hamza was being watched by a number of agencies, the transfer of the Adie road property was allowed to go ahead. If the Government—