[bbfan1991]

Five suspected terrorists including Abu Hamza al-Masri can be extradited to the US, ending a long legal battle, UK High Court judges have ruled.

The radical cleric, Babar Ahmad, Syed Talha Ahsan, Adel Abdul Bary and Khaled al-Fawwaz failed to show "new and compelling" reasons not to send them.

Their appeal came after the European Court of Human Rights backed successive UK courts in ruling for extradition.

Judges said their extradition "may proceed immediately".

The Home Office has said will try to deport them "as quickly as possible".

Judges Sir John Thomas and Mr Justice Ousley said in their ruling that there was an "overwhelming public interest in the functioning of the extradition system" and that there was "no appeal from our decision".

The written ruling, read out in court, concluded that "each of the claimants' applications for permission to apply for judicial review or for a re-opening of the statutory appeals be dismissed".

"It follows that their extradition to the United States of America may proceed immediately."

Of Abu Hamza, whose lawyers argued he may not be fit to face trial on medical grounds, they said: "The sooner he is put on trial the better".

The judges rejected a plea by Abu Hamza to delay his extradition so he could undergo an MRI brain scan which, his lawyers said, could show he was unfit to plead because of degenerative problems.

The 54-year-old, a former imam at Finsbury Park mosque, north London, was suffering from chronic sleep deprivation and depression as a result of eight years in prison, his lawyers added.

The BBC's Dominic Casciani, at the High Court, said the British government had got the result it had wanted to see for eight years.

Great news.