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If he gives the go-ahead to the extradition, Abu Hamza’s lawyers can appeal against this decision to the High Court. This can take about three months.There could be a further appeal to the House of Lords, which must be lodged within 28 days, but could take months to be heard.

When all appeals are exhausted, the person must be extradited within one month. If every stage is contested, the process could take as long as one year which, before the new treaty, was the average time it took to extradite someone from Britain to America.

“It will cut out much of the paperwork that has led to unnecessary delays in the current system and allowed criminals to exploit loopholes and deliberately thwart justice,” Mr Blunkett said.

Critics say that American prosecutors do not have to give evidence of the alleged crime or prove reasonable grounds of suspicion, they only have to a give an account of the facts of the offence.

Under the treaty, which replaces one agreed in 1972 and ratified in 1976, Abu Hamza would not be extradited if there were a risk of the death penalty.

The Home Office said: “It is already provided for in the extradition arrangements with the US that the death penalty will not operate.” David Blunkett, as Home Secretary, would be likely to seek reassurance that this was the case before he signed off an extradition.

EXTRACTS FROM THE SERMONS

ON OSAMA BIN LADEN ‘Sheikh bin Laden is not a normal person. He is an example for all the Mujahidin with his past experience, goals and achievements’

ON SEPTEMBER 11 ‘Wherever you are, death will catch up with you even if you are in high, elevated safe towers . . . Who is to blame? The American Government and their pressure-cooker policy which exploded in their faces’

ON MARTYRDOM ‘We ask Allah to make us Mujahidin. We ask Allah to make us shaheed (martyrs). Many brothers, they want to be Mujahidin but they are so oppressed they want to leave their own countries. They want to do jihad in Kashmir, Chechnya, Eritrea, Afghanistan, but they wouldn’t dare to do jihad in their own homeland. But it is more rewardable and it is more obligatory. So let us open our eyes, let us not go for jihad which is far away from our countries, although it’s good but it’s not as good as you do in your own door.

ON FORGING DOCUMENTS ‘Don’t tell me about I don’t have papers and I don’t have . . . you’re all clever, you can make papers for yourself. You go make your own papers, you fight. This is also a part of jihad, this is also a part of the preparation’

ON WESTERN POLITICIANS ‘They don’t want Islam. They’ll have to fight Muslims, they’ll have to keep Muslims quiet and the first to be kept quiet are the militant Muslims, those who are speaking out those willing to sacrifice’

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