Hani Mohammed Yusuf al-Siba'i (هاني محمد يوسف السباعي) (born 1 March 1961 in Qaylubiyah, Egypt) is an Egyptian Islamic scholar who was a member of Egyptian Islamic Jihad and now lives in London as a political refugee. Efforts to deport him have failed. He is a supporter of al-Qaeda and is used as a scholarly reference by the movement. The leader of al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, listed him as one of four scholars that Muslims worldwide should follow, alongside Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, Abu Qatada and Dr. Tariq Abdelhaleem. Biography Al-Siba'i fought as part of the mujahideen in the Soviet–Afghan War according to his own autobiography. Al-Siba'i arrived in Britain in 1994 claiming that he had been tortured by the Egyptian police because he represented Islamist clients. His claim for asylum was rejected in 1998 and he was later arrested on terrorism charges but the charges were dropped. He sought and was granted refugee status in the United Kingdom prior to his 1998 arrest in connection with Operation Challenge. He was accused of membership in the terrorist group Egyptian Islamic Jihad. It was his defence of Islamists, that got him into trouble with the Egyptian government. Egyptian prosecutors were able to prove in court that he was one of the fourteen members of the shura of Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Egyptian authorities convicted him in absentia in the 1999 case of the returnees from Albania and sentenced him to 15 years imprisonment. Al-Siba'i has appeared on Arab TV stations including al-Jazeera where, on the day after the July 7 bombings in London, he expressed his support for the September 11 attacks. In September 2005, he was one of seven Egyptians whose names were added to the UN 1267 Committee's list of banned individuals. A few days later he was added to the list of Specially Designated Nationals maintained by the US Treasury Office of Foreign Assets Control, as a supporter of al-Qaeda or an allied group. In 2009 and 2010, al-Seba'i was, along with others subject to Treasury Control Orders, a participant in HM Treasury v Ahmed. Their joint victory in the Supreme Court forced the government of Gordon Brown to create the Terrorist Asset-Freezing (Temporary Provisions) Act 2010. The court deemed the TCOs, which had been issued as the result of a UN directive, to be ultra vires, because the executive could not delegate powers to the UN (later to be returned