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Ammon News - The Telegraph

Abu Qatada's wife and five children left their taxpayer funded home in north-west London and were driven to Heathrow Airport by officials from the Home Office just after lunchtime.

They then boarded the 5.05pm American Airlines flight to Amman, where Qatada is currently awaiting trial of terrorism charges.

The family’s departure signals a victory for the Home Office, which successfully secured Qatada’s deportation from Britain last month, following a decade long legal battle, which is estimated to have cost the taxpayer in excess of £3 million.

A spokesman for the Home Office confirmed that the family had left and said they had also abandoned their bid to be granted the right to live here permanently.

The spokesman said: “Abu Qatada’s wife and five children have now left the UK. The family has formally agreed to stop an outstanding application for indefinite leave to remain.”

Sources said the Home Secretary would also use the powers available to her to prevent the family from returning to Britain in the future.

Qatada fled to Britain from Jordan in 1993 with his wife and three children, using a forged United Arab Emirates passport. He went on to have two more children in Britain.

He claimed asylum on the grounds of religious persecution and was granted leave to remain in 1994.

Five years later he was convicted in absentia in Jordan of terror charges and sentenced to life imprisonment.

In 2001 he was questioned over alleged links to a German terror cell and became one of the country’s most wanted men when he went on the run.

He was finally arrested in 2002 and detained at Belmarsh high security jail in south east London, while the government tried to work out what to do with him.

Attempts to deport him to his native Jordan were persistently frustrated by the European Courts which argued that such action would breach his human rights.

However when the Jordanian government ratified a new treaty, providing assurances over his right to a fair trial, Qatada gave up his fight to remain in Britain.

He left Britain on a private jet last month and is currently being held at Muwaqqar prison outside Amman, awaiting a retrial on terror offences.

His wife and children had been living in a half a million pound detached house in Stanmore, Middlesex after being moved there from their previous home in Acton, west London.

They were receiving benefits worth around £800 a week and had applied for the right to remain in Britain indefinitely.

But in recent months pressure had been mounting on the family to follow Qatada back to Jordan.

Neighbours in the street where they had been living since December had recently launched a collective protest about their presence and had threatened to stop paying their council tax until they were removed.

Members of the extremist English Defence League had also held protests against the family’s continued presence in the UK.

In a letter to an Islamic website, one of Qatada’s sons recently wrote: “Racist pressure groups in Britain hold demonstrations outside the house on a weekly basis between four in the afternoon and eleven in the evening. These demonstrators would scream and curse at us and at Islam.”

But in the letter he also claimed that the house was too small for the family and was too far from the schools attended by the younger children.

Before Qatada’s deportation the family had applied for the right to leave Britain for a third country, but the Home Office said the only country they could travel to was Jordan.

In the letter he wrote: “Let no one be under the impression that we want to stay here after having suffered so much."