Ammon News - AMMAN (AFP) — The wife and children of Islamist cleric Omar Othman, known as Abu Qatada, who faces trial on terror charges in Jordan following his deportation from Britain, are planning to move to Amman from London, a family friend said on Tuesday.

“Abu Qatada’s wife and five children want to leave Britain and come to Jordan. They are currently preparing for that,” the family friend told AFP, asking not to be named.

State Security Court (SSC) prosecutors on Sunday charged Abu Qatada, 53, with “conspiracy to carry out terrorist acts”, just hours after his deportation from Britain. He pleaded not guilty to the charges.

His lawyer Taysir Diab told AFP the military SSC would make its decision on a bail application on Wednesday.

“He is in good condition and is receiving good treatment. His mother and other members of his family here are visiting him in prison,” Diab said.

Abu Qatada has been remanded for 15 days in the Muwaqqar Prison, a maximum security facility built in 2007 that houses 1,100 inmates, most of them Islamists convicted of terrorism offences.

He was condemned to death in absentia in 1999 for conspiracy to carry out terror attacks, including on the American school in Amman, but the sentence was immediately commuted to life imprisonment with hard labour.

In 2000, he was sentenced in his absence to 15 years for plotting to carry out terror attacks on tourists in Jordan during millennium celebrations.

Jordanian law gives him the right to a retrial with him present in the dock.