Posted by NEWS on 31/5/2004, 19:21:14 The instructions were clear: be on a certain street corner in London's East End at 9pm. You will be met. The identity of the men was unclear - they hinted that they were disaffected worshippers - but their stories were confirmed by security sources. The meeting took place in early 2002 and their account tied in with previous reports that recruitment videos showing militants cutting the throats of Algerian soldiers were circulating in the mosque. They also fitted with the experiences of an MI5 agent who had infiltrated the red-brick religious centre stuck on a grim, traffic-choked island in north London. All the stories centred around one figure: Abu Hamza, the Egyptian-born prayer leader at Finsbury Park. With his hook hand and single eye, he fulfilled all the stereotypes of the 'mad mullah'. This weekend Abu Hamza is in Belmarsh prison in south west London, Britain's highest security jail. If his battle against extradition to the US fails, he will face an American court on serious terrorist charges. A conviction will mean decades in prison and, if the pledge the British government appears to have obtained is forgotten, possible execution. But the truth about 'Britain's bin Laden', as he has been dubbed by the Sun, is still elusive. Abu Hamza consistently denies the claims against him. 'It's a smear' is one of his favourite responses. 'Anyone who speaks the truth is silenced by false claims.' Associates of Abu Hamza say he is innocent of the American allegations - that he was in charge of the kidnapping of British and American tourists in the Yemen in 1998, provided logistical support to al-Qaeda and the Taliban, and tried to set up a terrorist training camp in Oregon. On Friday a hundred young men lined up in the street outside the now closed Finsbury Park mosque - it was shut down last February - to pray for the release of 'the Sheikh'. With the congregation sitting before him, the new prayer leader spoke of 'the enslavement of British Muslims' and the 'prison of the oppressors'. Speaking mainly in Arabic, he placed Abu Hamza at the head of a long line of radical Muslim thinkers. He spoke of Abdullah Azam, an early spiritual mentor of Osama bin Laden, who was assassinated in 1989, and Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman, 'the blind sheikh' currently in jail in America for leading a bombing plot in the early Nineties. But in fact, flattered though he might be by the comparison, Abu Hamza has little in common with such internationally known Islamic radicals. Few in radical Islamic circles or the intelligence community seriously believe he is 'the bin Laden of Britain', or 'the real [terrorist] deal', as New York police chief Ray Kelly described him. Domestic security sources have consistently referred to him as 'a clown' and say that his public profile was so high that it rendered him useless to any genuine terrorist organisation. Advertiser links whizz-kidz.org.uk compassionuk.org sponsor-a-child.venister.org Though not previously known as a radical Muslim, Abu Hamza was profoundly affected by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and, like thousands of others, travelled to Pakistan to take part in the struggle against Moscow's forces. Arriving in the late Eighties, as the war was drawing to a close, he spent most of his time in the border town of Peshawar, making occasional forays into Afghanistan itself. It was during one of these trips that he lost an eye and his right hand. If you believe him, it was while clearing a landmine. If you believe American security service sources, it was while preparing a bomb. The end of the Afghan war resulted in a diaspora of militants. Returning to his native Egypt, where Afghan veterans had galvanised a decades-old struggle between the state and militants, was out of the question. Suspected activists were being picked up by Cairo's notoriously brutal security authorities in their thousands. So Abu Hamza joined many activists making their way to London where they could exploit a tradition of tolerance to continue their campaigning. Abu Hamza was not a well-known figure in 'Londonistan' in the early Nineties but his ousting of the moderate leaders of Finsbury Park mosque, once a community project sponsored by the Prince of Wales, gave him a base to work from. After consolidating his hold on the 2,000-capacity religious centre - and its funds - Abu Hamza began preaching his violent brand of Islam. Abu Hamza was first thrust into the public spotlight in December 1998, when five young British Muslims were arrested on terrorist charges in Yemen, where the authorities were fighting a long and deadly war against Islamic militants. Among them was Abu Hamza's son Mohammed Mustafa and his stepson Mohsin Ghalain. According to the Yemeni authorities, the British men were apprehended when they made the simple tourist error of driving 'the British way' - clockwise - around a traffic island late at night. The driver refused to stop when challenged but later crashed into another car. In the wreckage Yemeni authorities claimed they found arms and explosives. It was alleged that the group were members of Supporters of Sharia, an organisation run by Abu Hamza from the Finsbury Park mosque, and were planning to bomb British targets in Yemen. Supporters of Sharia videos were found in the hotel room used by the men in Yemen. They confessed to their involvement, but later said their statements had been extracted under torture, which is used systematically in Yemeni jails. Abu Hamza's connection to the events in Yemen, first reported in The Observer, marked his transformation to a player, albeit still low-level, on the international stage of the world 'jihad'.
Is Abu Hamza really Britain's Bin Laden?
British authorities labelled rabble-rousing cleric Abu Hamza 'a clown'. But now the US has branded him a terrorist mastermind. Report by Jason Burke and Martin Bright
The Observer
On the first evening no one turned up. Nor on the second. But on the third night, a blue people carrier pulled in. Forty minutes later, over a curry in a restaurant in Barking, two heavily bearded men were telling The Observer about Finsbury Park mosque. They spoke of deactivated Kalashnikovs being stripped and reassembled in its basements, of combat first aid and self-defence training to equip volunteers for 'holy war' and of consignments of medical equipment sent off to the Taliban, then battling in Afghanistan.
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Abu Hamza was born Mustafa Kamel Mustafa in Alexandria, Egypt, in 1957 and moved to the UK at the age of 22, first working as a nightclub bouncer and a karate instructor. He studied civil engineering and married a British woman, Valerie Fleming, in 1981, thus becoming a British citizen. The couple divorced a year later, having had one son.
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