Lawyer's firm earns nearly a million pounds representing terror suspects

London, June 7 : Mudassar Arani, the controversial lawyer who represented the Muslim cleric Abu Hamza and other terror suspects saw her firm earn almost one million pound in legal aid last year.

Arani has raked in a total of 3.5million pounds from the taxpayer over the last seven years.

According to the Daily Express, figures from the Legal Services Commission show that legal aid fees collected by her firm, Arani and Co, have almost quadrupled since the financial year 2001-02.

In 2002 it received 230,314 pound and this year 890,922 pound, the most it has ever been paid in one year.

According to documents released under the Freedom of Information Act, Arani's firm was paid 390,000 pound in May 2007 alone for legal aid work.

The firm's earnings have soared 120,000 pound - or 16 per cent - in the last 12 months, mostly defending extremist suspects including the former Muslim cleric Hamza, who is fighting extradition to the United States.

Her other clients include the "dirty bomb" plotter Dhiren Barot and three of the July 21 bombers.

Arani also represented Sulyeman Zain-Ul-Abidin, the first Muslim tried and cleared under the Terrorism Act 2000 following the September 11 attacks on America in 2001.

Arani, 44, sparked controversy when it emerged that her firm was circulating advice leaflets to "Muslims and those identified as anti-Establishment" on how to deal with the security services.

She operates from above a cash-and-carry store in Southall, west London, and lives in a modest terraced house in nearby Brentford.

The lawyer, who speaks Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi and English, arrived in the United Kingdom from Uganda aged eight in 1972 after dictator Idi Amin expelled the African country's whole Asian population.

ANI