Abu Hamza and Other Terror Suspects Arrive in U.S.

This Friday, April 30, 2004 file photo shows Muslim cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri, as he arrives with a masked bodyguard, right, to conduct Friday prayers in the street outside the closed Finsbury Park Mosque in London. 

A British court is expected to rule on whether extremist cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri is too ill to be extradited to the United States to face terror charges. London's High Court is set to decide Friday Oct. 5, 2012 whether al-Masri and other terror suspects can be sent to the U.S. to face charges that include helping set up a terrorist training camp in rural Oregon

Radical cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri, the man authorities said tried to set up a terrorist training camp on American soil, has arrived in the U.S. to stand trial after an eight-year delay.

Hamza and the four other suspects had put up fierce legal opposition to extradition and had argued they had human rights concerns about the conditions they would face in U.S. prisons. The U.S. government first requested Hamza's extradition when he was picked up by British police in 2004.

Suicide bomb near Damascus mosque

A suicide bomber killed nine people, some of them security men, outside a Damascus mosque on Friday, Syrian state media said, in another blow to a fraying U.N.-brokered truce between President Bashar al-Assad and rebels fighting for his downfall.

The explosion under a flyover occurred as worshippers were leaving the Midan district's Zain al-Abideen mosque, which was under heavy security due to its reputation as a launchpad for anti-Assad demonstrations after Friday prayers.

A resident who spoke to security officials at the scene said they reported a man in military uniform walking towards the area from a nearby street.

When several soldiers went to challenge him, he triggered an explosives vest, they said. Many of the body parts scattered across the tarmac were wearing green military-style clothing, the resident added.

State media said 28 people were also wounded in the blast, one of several in the country of 23 million on Friday.

"We had been trying to go to pray in the area but they stopped us at a checkpoint. Security weren't letting us in because there are usually protests there," one anti-Assad activist told Reuters by telephone.

"Then we heard the blast. It was so loud and then ambulances came rushing past us," the activist added. "I could see a few body parts and pieces of flesh on the road. The front of a restaurant looked destroyed. People were screaming."  CONTINUE . . . . .