It is good to see actions finally beginning to really take hold in Europe to roll up the most vocal and visible preachers of hate and murder.

Britain launched a crackdown on foreign-born Islamic ideologues yesterday, arresting 10 of them and announcing they would be deported for posing a threat to national security.
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Clarke did not identify the 10 or say where they would be sent. But lawyers said that among them was Jordanian-Palestinian preacher Abu Qatada, 44. Investigators say Qatada’s fiery sermons have inspired radicals across Europe and in the Middle East, and videos of the cleric were found in the Hamburg flat used by the leader of the Sept. 11 plot, Mohamed Atta.
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Abu Qatada entered Britain on a forged United Arab Emirates passport in 1993 and was granted asylum. Investigators have linked him to terrorist cells and plots in countries including Spain, France, Italy, Belgium and Jordan.

In addition to Atta, he has been linked to would-be shoe bomber Richard Reid and Zacarias Moussaoui, who pleaded guilty in April to charges connected to the Sept. 11 plot. And investigators say his teachings have had a profound influence on frontline fighters such as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of an al-Qaida-affiliated group in Iraq.

Qatada, whose full name is Omar Mahmoud Othman, is a Palestinian who carries a Jordanian passport. He has been convicted twice in absentia in Jordan, including for conspiring to attack U.S. and Israeli tourists during millennium celebrations in 2000.

He also has been indicted by Spanish authorities in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks and last year’s train bombings that killed 191 people in Madrid. In requesting the portly cleric’s extradition, Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon described him as Osama bin Laden’s “spiritual ambassador to Europe.”

But why has this lunatic been on the lose for so long? Why have we not been able to gather up this low hanging fruit in the Global War on Terror before now? This is all very mystifying, to say the least.