The process of extraditing the radical cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri to stand trial in the United States finally began yesterday – three years after he was arrested on an American warrant.

Abu Hamza, 48, was brought before Woolwich Crown Court after a judge rejected his latest attempts to delay the case.

Lawyers for the former imam of Finsbury Park mosque read a list of grievances ranging from complaints about strip-searching to grumbles about having to climb 40 steps to the courtroom from the cells.

But District Judge Timothy Workman said that a doctor had declared Abu Hamza fit to appear and ordered the hearing to go ahead.

The Egyptian-born preacher was arrested in May 2004 shortly after the introduction of the controversial Anglo-American treaty intended to fast-track extradition cases.

But senior law officers, including the Director of Public Prosecutions and the Attorney-General, insisted that he stand trial in Britain first.

An Old Bailey jury convicted him in February last year of charges of incitement to murder and stir up race hatred.

The preacher, who lost both hands and an eye while allegedly mixing explosives in Afghanistan in 1993, was jailed for seven years.

It has taken a further 15 months to bring him back to court to face the US Government’s more serious allegations of direct involvement in terrorist activity.

Hugo Keith, the counsel for the US authorities, told the court that Abu Hamza had been involved in “blatant violence, kidnapping and terrorist training”.

Mr Keith said: “The general allegation is that Abu Hamza is a member of a global conspiracy to wage jihad against the US and other Western countries.

“He advocates the defence of Islam through violent, unlawful and armed aggression.”

Mr Keith said that Abu Hamza had also “initiated and facilitated violent jihad” in the UK, Afghanistan and Yemen.

The US indictment included a charge that Abu Hamza “did aid, abet, counsel and procure” Abu Hassan, who led a terrorist hostage-taking in Yemen in 1998 in which four hostages – three Britons and an Australian – were killed. Mr Keith said that when the hostages were being held, calls had been made from Abu Hamza’s West London home to the kidnappers’ satellite phone. Other charges brought by the US relate to an attempt to establish a jihad training camp in Bly, Oregon, in late 1999 and early 2000.

Mr Keith said that the camp was designed to be a place that Muslims “could attend to receive military-style training to fight jihad”.

Abu Hamza sent two aides to London to help to set up the camp and gave one of them £4,000 to finance the scheme.

Another charge relates to sending Feroz Abbasi, a Muslim student from Croydon, South London, to a training camp in Afghanistan.

The court was told that Abu Hamza helped to fund Mr Abbasi’s travel expenses and entrusted him to the care of James Ujaama, one of the cleric’s followers.

Mr Abbasi was later captured and held in the US internment camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He was released and returned to Britain in 2005.

In a statement to the court Mr Abbasi, who is now studying at university under a new identity, denied that Abu Hamza had sent him to Afghanistan. Mr Abbasi said: “Afghanistan was considered an Islamic emirate at the [Finsbury Park] mosque. My intention was to stay there under Islamic rule but [Abu Hamza] did not tell me to go.”

Ujaama has pleaded guilty to terrorist offences in the US but has struck a plea bargain deal and is expected to be a key witness against Abu Hamza if he is extradited.

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