Abu Qatada
Abu QatadaReuters

Terrorist and hate preacher Abu Qatada was acquitted - and released - by a Jordanian court on Wednesday, on charges of plotting the 2000 "millennium plot" on American and Israeli tourists.

This is the second acquittal for Abu Qatada. The terrorist, who was deported from Britain in July 2013 after a 10-year legal battle, was acquitted last month of plotting a 1999 attack on the American school in Amman.

But he remained in prison for the second terror charges, for which he had originally been sentenced 15 years in prison in absentia. 

Once described by a Spanish judge as “Osama bin Laden’s deputy in Europe,” tapes of his sermons on Islam were found in the home of Mohammed Atta, the ringleader of the 9/11 attacks in America.

He was born in Bethlehem in 1960, when it was under Jordanian rule, and so holds Jordanian citizenship. He fled to Britain in the 1990s, claiming asylum based on allegations that he had been tortured in Jordan.

His claims of torture were what made it difficult for successive British governments to deport him. British and European courts repeatedly blocked his expulsion from the country due to concerns that he could be convicted based on evidence obtained by torture. 

However, after being deported in 2013 - and despite both acquittals - the British government has refused to allow him to return, officials said Wednesday.

“Abu Qatada’s retrial in Jordan was made possible thanks to this government’s determination to successfully deport him from the UK to face the courts in his own country," a spokesman from Britain's Home Office stated shortly after the acquittal. “It is right that the due process of law has taken place in Jordan. The UK courts agreed that Abu Qatada posed a threat to national security in the UK, so we are pleased that we were able to remove him."

“Abu Qatada remains subject to a deportation order and a United Nations travel ban," the spokesman added. "He is not coming back to the UK.”