WHATEVER the truth of the allegations that five British Muslims arrested in Yemen were part of an armed gang plotting murder, or that the terrorists who killed four of the Western tourists they abducted were seeking the release of these five, an undeniable fact remains.

That is the link of both with the half-blind, handless former member of the mujahideen Islamic warriors in Afghanistan, Abu Hamza Ak-Masri, now based at a North London mosque, who openly advocates the overthrow of all regimes which do not adhere to Islamic law.

This, of course, includes our own - and Sheikh Hamza's hostility to it is evidenced not only by his pamphlets spreading calls for an Islamic state in Britain, but his admitted telephone conversation with the hostage-takers BEFORE their killings.

And also by the fact that the alleged British Muslim terrorists held in Yemen accused, among other things, of seeking to blow up the British consulate and an Anglican Church there, include his own stepson while his own 17-year-old natural son is on the run from the Yemeni police.

It is, of course, no exaggeration to say that Sheikh Hamza is an extreme Islamic fundamentalist - not when the policies he advocates are outlined on a Web site connected with the Finsbury mosque where he preaches. It allocates 17 pages to the fatwa against the "enemies of Islam" issued by Osama bin Laden, the terrorist accused by America of masterminding the bombings of US embassies in East Africa last year which killed 224 people.

I have no doubt that Sheikh Hamza is an embarrassment to the vast majority of decent, peace-loving Muslims in this county.

But what is this Egyptian-born former civil engineer doing in this country, fomenting hatred, communicating with killers and drawing disability benefit worth as much as £87.15 a week for injuries he incurred fighting the Soviets in another country?

He is here, we learn, as a British citizen and drawing benefit by right, having been made a British subject in 1985 - though the Home Office refuses to say why this was granted.

But no matter how confident the Home Office may be that it does not have to explain to the rest of us why a person so hostile to this society can live in it and off it, perhaps it will tell us why Sheikh Hamza remains a free member of it when the law clearly forbids the organisation of terrorist activities abroad from this country.

Should he not at least be invited to assist with inquiries?

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.