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Hamza wife faces eviction from £600k council home
Last updated at 11:52am on 12.10.06
Left: The home of Abu Hamza's wife, Najat Chaffe, right.
The wife of the jailed Islamic preacher Abu Hamza was under investigation today over her right to live in a £600,000 house at the taxpayer's expense.
The Evening Standard, the Daily Mail's sister paper, has learned that she was given the five-bedroom council house next to a Cabinet minister after she claimed she was assaulted by the hook-handed cleric.
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Preacher of hate in £250k buy-to-let scandal
She was rehoused by her local authority in 1989 but then went on to have five more children with the man she had originally claimed had been abusing her. The revelation will raise serious questions over whether Hamza's wife and children have the right to stay in the house in Aldbourne Road, Shepherd's Bush.
Najat Chaffe, Hamza's Moroccan-born second wife, now faces eviction from her home after Hammersmith & Fulham Council announced an investigation into her right to be there.
The inquiry follows the discovery - revealed in yesterday's Evening Standard - that Hamza secretly bought a £220,000 house in Greenford in west London as a buy-to-let investment while in prison. The council also wants to know whether Ms Chaffe has received any of the rental income from the house in Hicks Avenue in Greenford. She and her children receive a reported £680 a week in state handouts.
A court order was granted in the summer putting a freeze on the sale of the four-bedroom semi. Hamza, jailed for seven years for incitement to murder and other race hate crimes, was awarded up to £250,000 legal aid.
Ms Chaffe is one of three named people in the court order - obtained by the Legal Services Commission - who are "restrained from dealing with the property".
Cllr Adronie Alford, the borough's cabinet member for housing, said today: "We take any allegations of fraud extremely seriously. If there is evidence that any tenant has defrauded the council, we will take whatever action is needed."
Ms Chaffe moved into the present family home, next door to Work and Pensions Secretary John Hutton, in Shepherd's Bush in 1995.
Hamza, meanwhile, moved into his own council flat in Hammersmith in 1999 in Adie Road, which he bought under right-to-buy for £100,000, selling it on in 2004 for £228,000. He used the profits from that sale to buy the house in Greenford in cash just a month later while on remand in Belmarsh.
Neither property deal should have been allowed to go through because Hamza's assets were supposed to have been frozen by the Treasury under anti-terrorism sanctions. But all the time Ms Chaffe has supposedly been separated from Hamza, there are suspicions the couple remain very close.
Neighbours in Aldbourne Road today said the preacher was ever-present until his arrest in 2004 and that the Hamzas lived as "one big happy family".
One woman, too afraid to give her name, said: "It looked like they had a lot of fun over there with all the people coming and going all the time. We never saw any evidence of domestic abuse, but then she hardly left the house.
"He would mostly be coming out of the house with his teenage sons holding his mobile phone for him. They'd come and go in the car as a family."
Reader views (7)
I thought that you had to hold on to 'Right-to-buy' property for several years before you were eligible to sell it. People should be shocked at how our welfare money is spent. No wonder half the population want the Labour party to continue it's like easy money.
- Terry Sentonaris, Hounslow UK
Where do the figures come from? I am not sure anyone gets over 600 pounds a week in benefits, especially if their children are over 16 (as I believe at least 2 of the Hamzas sons are.) If this is true, it's a disgrace, but until I see solid proof and not supposition and speculation, I'll reserve judgement.
- Niki, London, UK
I am speechless! No words can describe the anger I feel at where my hard-earned money is going!
- Gosia, London
Mr Abu Hamza has, for years, allegedly been playing Ducks and Drakes with various bodies of officialdom in this country, not least the Treasuary (Gordon `Prudence' Brown kindly note), whom it was reported `had frozen his assets under anti-terrorist sanctions'.
What kind of message does this slack performance, by our would be our next Prime Minister, send out to the diligent tax payers of this country?
And what kind message is sent to those struggling to keep a roof over their heads when they read the scandalous allegations that Hamza's wife is `given' a £600,000 council property and is reported to be receiving around £680 per week to live on, with the further allegation that she might be coining a part of the rent from another property, paid for with £220,000 in cash by her husband?
The sums involved are mind boggling enough to warrant a fusillade of questions to everyone involved in Hamza's wife's living arrangements and benefit receipts and, if wrongdoing is proved, every single penny must be clawed back without delay, to be swiftly followed by the application of criminal poceedings.
- Ted Knight, Shetland
Anyone else thoroughly sick of this? Millions down the drain every day.
- Paul Laundy, London
Since finding out these people are receiving taxpayers money to pay for their legal aid, council houses, benefits, I am seriously thinking of emigrating. It's the final straw. It seems that the harder you work in this country at the moment, the more that's taken off you and the more you cheat and scrounge the more you are given!
- Jane, London
I think this is just an example of a widespread abuse of the system, I'm sure Hamza is just one of many working the system. Perhaps council's should only offer "Right to Buy" to those who can demonstrate a solid working record. Who on earth offers people who don't work mortgages, was the mortgage council funded? If it was cash funded, surely money laundering investigations should have kicked in somewhere along the line?
- Ab, London
