He may be barred from the country. He may also have a heart operation paid for by the same government that may bar him from the country. From the Telegraph, with thanks to Filtrat:
The Government was under intense pressure last night to carry out Tony Blair’s threats to expel extremist Muslim clerics after news that one of them was expected to return for a heart operation on the health service.
Omar Bakri Mohammed, who is in Lebanon, is due to have treatment at St Thomas’s Hospital, just across the Thames from the Palace of Westminster.
Bakri, who has said he would never warn police if he learned of an impending suicide bomber attack by fellow Muslims, is in theory free to return to his family in London as he was granted indefinite leave to stay in the 1980s.
Bakri left Britain for the first time in 20 years at the weekend after gaining a Lebanese passport, apparently without the knowledge of the Home Office, to fly to Beirut where his mother lives.
He receives £331.28 a month in incapacity benefit and £183.30 a month in disability living allowance because of a leg injury he suffered in his teens.
Both payments will continue for at least six months while he is abroad, as long as he plans to return, as will the housing benefit on his home in Edmonton, north London, and his council tax benefit.
His wife, who remains in Britain with their seven children, can also continue to claim a benefits package thought to be worth at least £1,300 a month. Bakri drives a Toyota people carrier worth £30,000, paid for under a scheme called Motability.
The preacher is expected to return for an angioplasty procedure. That involves inserting and inflating a balloon in the coronary artery to improve blood flow.
He has been receiving treatment at North Middlesex Hospital, near his home, as well as at St Thomas’s.
One of his supporters told The Daily Telegraph yesterday: “He has a heart condition and was scheduled for treatment but I don’t know when or if he is planning to return for it.”
Bakri, who comes from a wealthy, orthodox Muslim family from Syria, ran a computer business when he arrived in Britain but it collapsed.
As a teenager, he lived in Beirut. He then studied Sharia law at Damascus University before moving to Saudi Arabia.
He was deported and claimed asylum in Britain.
Despite Mr Blair’s assurance last Friday that Britain would no longer be a haven for Muslim extremists, John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister, said this week that Bakri had committed no offence and was therefore free to “come in and out”.