Omar Mahmoud Othman (; born 30 December 1960), better known as his nom de guerre Abu Qatada al-Filistini ( ; ), is a Jordanian Salafi cleric. Abu Qatada was accused of having links to terrorist organisations and frequently imprisoned in the United Kingdom without formal charges or prosecution before being deported to Jordan, where he was acquitted of multiple terrorism charges.
Abu Qatada claimed asylum in the United Kingdom in 1993 on a forged passport. In 1999, he was convicted in absentia in Jordan of planning thwarted terror plots during Jordan's millennium eve and was sentenced to lifetime imprisonment with hard labour. Abu Qatada was repeatedly imprisoned and released in the United Kingdom after he was first detained under anti-terrorism laws in 2002 but was not prosecuted for any crime. The Algerian government described Abu Qatada as being involved with Islamists in London and possibly elsewhere. After initially barring the United Kingdom from deporting Abu Qatada to Jordan, in May 2012 the European Court of Human Rights denied him leave to appeal against deportation.
On 12 November 2012, the UK Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC) upheld Abu Qatada's appeal against deportation and released him on restrictive bail conditions. The Home Secretary Theresa May said the government would appeal against the decision. He was deported to Jordan on 7 July 2013, after the UK and Jordanian governments agreed and ratified a treaty satisfying the need for clarification that evidence potentially gained through torture would not be used against him in his forthcoming trial.
On 26 June 2014, Abu Qatada was retried as is required by the Jordanian legal system if the defendant is returned to the country. He was found not guilty by a Jordanian court of terrorism charges relating to one alleged 1999 plot. He remained in prison pending a verdict that was due September 2014 on a second alleged plot. On 24 September 2014, a panel of civilian judges sitting at Amman's State Security Court cleared him of being involved in a thwarted plot aimed at Western and Israeli targets in Jordan during the millennium celebrations in 2000 due to "insufficient evidence". Evidence used to convict him in the previous trial was disregarded, per the treaty signed between the United Kingdom and Jordan, as they may have been potentially acquired through torture.
Despite his history with militancy, scholar of Islam Daniel Lav argues that it should not hide his scholarly credentials in traditional Islamic studies, as "he certainly has connections to al-Qaʻida, but he is also the author of a polemic against the theological views of a nineteenth-century rector of al-Azhar, coauthor of a reference work on the eleventh-century scholar Ibn Hazm's evaluations of transmitters of hadith, and editor of an influential twentieth-century Wahhabi work of theology." In the same tone, Victoria Brittain, a former associate foreign editor of The Guardian, and who knows him personally, also says that "the man behind the myth is a scholar with wide intellectual and cultural interests. He wrote books while he was in prison. His home is filled with books."
Life
Abu Qatada, who was born Omar Mahmoud Othman, has Jordanian nationality because he was born in Bethlehem in the West Bank in 1960, which at that time was ruled by Jordan. In 1989, he went to Peshawar in Pakistan where he served as a professor of sharia sciences. He obtained his Bachelor's in Islamic jurisprudence in 1984 while in Jordan and his Master's in the same subject from the Peshawar University, where he became a lecturer through the influence of another Jordanian-Palestinian influential jihadi cleric, Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi. Abu Qatada said that while in Pakistan he had no relationship to Al-Qaeda, which was just beginning to form in Afghanistan at that time. In 1991, after the Gulf War, Abu Qatada was expelled from Kuwait, along with many other Palestinians. He returned to Jordan, but in September 1993, he fled with his wife and five children to the UK, using a forged UAE passport. Citing religious persecution and stating he had been tortured in Jordan, Abu Qatada requested asylum, which was granted in June 1994.
Around 1994, Abu Qatada started up and was editor-in-Chief of a weekly magazine, Usrat al-Ansar, a Groupe Islamique Armé (GIA) propaganda outlet. Abu Qatada provided the intellectual and ideological support for the journal, which became "a trusted source of news and information about the GIA for Islamists around the world."
Abu Qatada was granted leave to remain to 30 June 1998. On 8 May 1998, he applied for indefinite leave to remain. This application had not been determined before Abu Qatada's arrest on 23 October 2002. On that date British authorities detained him under the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001.
Abu Qatada resided in the United Kingdom until 7 July 2013, when he was deported back to Jordan to face retrials for alleged involvement in varied Jordanian mayhem. He was freed after both Jordanian retrials, in which by formal agreement with the UK government evidence obtained by torture was discarded. His imprisonment ended in September 2014.
According to Conservative politician Boris Johnson, Abu Qatada's residence in Britain is estimated to have cost the British taxpayer at least £500,000 in benefit payments to his family and other expenses by early 2012. The Daily Telegraph claimed the cost to be as high as £3 million by May 2012, a figure that was not confirmed by the British Home Office.
Views
Abu Qatada belonged to the Salafi sect, though he strongly criticised the followers of fellow Salafi Rabee al-Madkhali for being too closely aligned to the Saudi government. At the same time Abu Qatada praised fellow Salafi writer Nasiruddin Albani and considered him a great scholar.
In 1995, Abu Qatada reportedly issued a fatwa stating that it is justified to kill both Muslims who renounce their faith and their families. In 1997, Abu Qatada called on Muslims to kill the wives and children of Egyptian police and army officers.
In October 1999, he gave a speech at London's Four Feathers mosque in which he "effectively issued a fatwa authorising the killing of Jews, including Jewish children", according to the British case against him. He reportedly told his congregation that American citizens "should be attacked, wherever they were" and that "there was no difference between English, Jews and Americans". "According to the British case against him, in October 1999 he made a speech in which "he effectively issued a fatwa authorising the killing of Jews, including Jewish children". He told his congregation that Americans should be attacked, wherever they were; that in his view they were no better than Jews; and that there was no difference between English, Jewish and American people."
In a sermon on 14 September 2001, he described the 9/11 attacks as part of a wider battle between Christendom and Islam. "In a sermon on 14 September 2001, he said the attacks were part of a wider battle between Christendom and Islam, and were a response to America's unjust policies." In autumn 2002, a poem praising Osama bin Laden and glorifying the attacks appeared online. It was attributed to Abu Qatada. In another sermon he stated that it was not a sin for a Muslim to kill a non-believer for the sake of Islam. "In autumn 2002, a poem attributed to Abu Qatada appeared online praising Bin Laden and glorifying the attacks, while in a sermon he stated that it was not a sin for a Muslim to kill a non-believer for the sake of Islam."
The contents of an article written by him for Al-Risalah, the propaganda magazine of al-Qaeda in Syria, were reported by several news outlets. In it he said that Islam will dominate every land and the "state of Jews" will collapse by the "grace of Allah". He also attacked the Shias in the article calling by them the derogatory term "Rawafidh" and said "Allah exposes our enemies from amongst the filthy Rawafidh, heretics, and their beloved friends from amongst the polytheists".
In January 2016, Abu Qatada released a video on his YouTube account, the 24th installment of a project entitled 1,000 Books before Death, discussing The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and in which he stated (as translated by MEMRI), that blood libel accusation against Jews is true, stating that "This Jewish blood matzos ... there is a text in the Talmud ... It says that the matzos eaten by the Jews on their holiday must be consecrated with the blood of a man from among the Gentiles. Usually they take a Christian because they cannot overpower a Muslim. This actually happened, yet they [the BBC] treat it as a mockery." In the same video, Abu Qatada alleged that "The Jews control the world and that is a fact. The Jews run the global economy, that is a fact. Do you want me to give you the numbers? Can any rational person who has read the history of the Bolshevik Revolution deny that it was won due to the support of the Jews, and the Jewish money of the Rothschild family? Can anyone deny that Lenin was Jewish? Can any rational person dare say that there is even one Communist party in the world that was not founded by the Jews?"
Links and influence
Although Abu Qatada distanced himself from al-Qaeda following his arrest in London in 2001, Fawaz Gerges remarks that Abu Qatada had extensive contacts with al-Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan at the time. Jason Burke notes, "Qutada has impeccable traditional and modern Salafist credentials and had acted as the in-house alim to radical groups, particularly in Algeria, from his base in northwest London since 1994". In 2001, after bin Laden was criticised by a Salafist faction for issuing fatwas, he turned to Abu Qatada for support, and the support was forthcoming.
According to the indictment of the Madrid al-Qaeda cell prepared by Spanish prosecutors in 2001, Abu Qatada was "considered the spiritual leader" of al-Qaeda in Europe and other groups including the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), and the Tunisian Combat Group. Abu Qatada has been called by The Times a preacher or advisor to al-Qaeda terrorists Zacarias Moussaoui and Richard Reid. According to The Independent, videos of Abu Qatada's sermons were found in the Hamburg apartment of Mohamed Atta when it was searched after the 11 September 2001 attacks, which Atta led.
When questioned in the UK in February 2001, Abu Qatada was in possession of £170,000 cash and £805 in an envelope labelled "for the Mujahedin in Chechnya". Mr Justice Collins, then chairman of the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC) that rejected his appeal against detention without charge or trial in 2004, said that Abu Qatada was "heavily involved, indeed was at the centre in the United Kingdom of terrorist activities associated with al-Qaeda. He is a truly dangerous individual". Abu Qatada was subsequently released in 2005, never having been charged with any crime. Abu Qatada's name is included in the UN al-Qaeda sanction list pursuant to United Nations Security Council Resolution 1267.
In 2005, Abu Qatada recorded a video message to the kidnappers of peace activist Norman Kember, appealing for Kember to be released. BBC journalist Alan Johnston was kidnapped in Gaza on 13 March 2007. Johnston's captors, the Doghmush clan who headed the Army of Islam, demanded the release of dozens of captives, including Abu Qatada. Abu Qatada offered to help negotiate Johnston's release. In April 2012, the al-Qaeda-linked Somali group Al-Shabaab threatened an attack against the UK if Abu Qatada was deported.
On 7 February 2012, The Daily Telegraph reported that a senior manager at the BBC had instructed its journalists not to call Abu Qatada an extremist. The BBC subsequently used the form of words "accused of being one of the UK's most dangerous extremist preachers". Others have described him as "a prominent political refugee".