2RHPZ
06-02-2004, 01:34 PM
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
Sunday May 30, 2004
The Observer
The instructions were clear: be on a certain street corner in London's East End
at 9pm. You will be met.
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.
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.
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.
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'.
The American authorities accuse Abu Hamza of direct involvement in the
kidnapping of 16 Western tourists in Yemen on 28 December, 1998, a few days
after the arrest of the British men. It ended in a bloody shootout between the
kidnappers and the Yemeni authorities in which three Britons and an Australian
were killed. Investigators believed that the bombing plot and the kidnapping
were both organised by Sheikh Abul Hassan Mehdar, the leader of the Islamic Army
of Abyan, an associate of Abu Hamza's from Afghanistan. The grand jury
indictment against Abu Hamza reveals details of intercepted satellite phone
conversations between the London-based cleric and Yemen. Abu Hamza has never
denied his friendship with the Yemeni sheikh, later executed, and told The
Observer at the time that he was trying to use his influence to avoid bloodshed.
US prosecutors will claim that Abu Hamza supplied the satellite phone the
kidnappers used, and spoke to them before and during the kidnap itself and
advised on the hostage-taking.
It will be difficult for Abu Hamza to dissociate himself from the Islamic Army
of Abyan and its leader, who he saw as a hero of the Islamic struggle. At the
time it was suggested that the hostages were taken in order to obtain the
release of Abu Hamza's sons and the other British detainees as a personal
favour. British police arrested Abu Hamza in 1999 in connection with the
kidnapping, but there was insufficient evidence for a prosecution. Five years
on, the Americans clearly disagree.
From 1999, Abu Hamza was watched carefully. An Algerian living in London was
recruited by MI5 and sent into the mosque to report on the activities of Abu
Hamza and the men who were gathering around him. Last week the agent told The
Observer he was 'overjoyed' at the arrest.
But the security services preferred to keep tabs on Abu Hamza rather than arrest
him. This was partly because they did not believe he was dangerous and partly to
keep the militants in one place where surveillance was easier. They also lacked
legal powers to secure a conviction. But 11 September changed all that.
As investigators reconstructed the al-Qaeda networks behind the attacks in New
York and Washington, they discovered a series of connections that ran through
Finsbury Park. Zacarias Moussaoui, a French Algerian who has been charged with
being part of the team that hijacked the planes which hit the twin towers (the
authorities say he was arrested on other charges before he could join the
hijackers on the planes), had worshipped there. So had Richard Reid, the
British-born convert to Islam who tried to blow himself up on a transatlantic
jet in December 2001, and Nizar Trabelsi, a Tunisian-born former professional
footballer and drug addict who was sentenced to 10 years in prison by a Belgian
court for plotting to blow himself up outside the American embassy in Paris.
Many of the Britons who ended up in Guantanamo Bay were found to have spent time
at the mosque - as had a series of other militants picked up around the world.
The American indictment alleges further activities at the mosque. Much of the
material it contains is based on the testimony of James Ujaama, a one-time
associate of Abu Hamza who was 'turned' by an American policeman. Ujaama, whose
20 years' sentence was cut to two years as an incentive to give evidence against
Abu Hamza, was released the day Abu Hamza was arrested. Ujaama speaks of
volunteers packed off to Afghanistan to undergo military training.
Abu Hamza has tried to keep a low profile over the last three years. In his
public statements he has tried to stress that he is 'no threat to the UK' and
has accused the media of hugely inflating his power. But when preaching in
private he has been less circumspect. Tapes show him exhorting audiences to
violent struggle and 'martyrdom' in Kashmir, Chechnya and Afghanistan and,
particularly, in 'their homelands'.
'You don't have to travel thousands and thousands of miles to become a martyr -
you can be a martyr right on your doorstep,' Abu Hamza says in one. Jews are
evil and promote a 'Satanic ideology', he says in another.
Such statements, coupled with widespread reporting of the benefits payments that
Abu Hamza receives, have pressured the government to act. Last year David
Blunkett introduced legislation specifically aimed at Abu Hamza in order to
strip him of his British citizenship. This would allow him to be deported or
detained without trial as a foreign terrorist suspect. This process, already
under way, would have taken years and the American extradition request has saved
the Home Secretary the trouble. Last week he was finally where Blunkett wanted
him - Belmarsh.
The American authorities hope his trial will provide a view of a genuine
terrorist. But experts point out that, even if proved true, the acts alleged in
the indictment took place some time ago. 'If they consider the imprisonment of
Abu Hamza a genuinely significant achievement in the war on terror, then we
should be very worried,' one analyst said. 'Serious terrorists don't stand in
streets and lead prayers.'
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
Sunday May 30, 2004
The Observer
The instructions were clear: be on a certain street corner in London's East End
at 9pm. You will be met.
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.
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.
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.
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'.
The American authorities accuse Abu Hamza of direct involvement in the
kidnapping of 16 Western tourists in Yemen on 28 December, 1998, a few days
after the arrest of the British men. It ended in a bloody shootout between the
kidnappers and the Yemeni authorities in which three Britons and an Australian
were killed. Investigators believed that the bombing plot and the kidnapping
were both organised by Sheikh Abul Hassan Mehdar, the leader of the Islamic Army
of Abyan, an associate of Abu Hamza's from Afghanistan. The grand jury
indictment against Abu Hamza reveals details of intercepted satellite phone
conversations between the London-based cleric and Yemen. Abu Hamza has never
denied his friendship with the Yemeni sheikh, later executed, and told The
Observer at the time that he was trying to use his influence to avoid bloodshed.
US prosecutors will claim that Abu Hamza supplied the satellite phone the
kidnappers used, and spoke to them before and during the kidnap itself and
advised on the hostage-taking.
It will be difficult for Abu Hamza to dissociate himself from the Islamic Army
of Abyan and its leader, who he saw as a hero of the Islamic struggle. At the
time it was suggested that the hostages were taken in order to obtain the
release of Abu Hamza's sons and the other British detainees as a personal
favour. British police arrested Abu Hamza in 1999 in connection with the
kidnapping, but there was insufficient evidence for a prosecution. Five years
on, the Americans clearly disagree.
From 1999, Abu Hamza was watched carefully. An Algerian living in London was
recruited by MI5 and sent into the mosque to report on the activities of Abu
Hamza and the men who were gathering around him. Last week the agent told The
Observer he was 'overjoyed' at the arrest.
But the security services preferred to keep tabs on Abu Hamza rather than arrest
him. This was partly because they did not believe he was dangerous and partly to
keep the militants in one place where surveillance was easier. They also lacked
legal powers to secure a conviction. But 11 September changed all that.
As investigators reconstructed the al-Qaeda networks behind the attacks in New
York and Washington, they discovered a series of connections that ran through
Finsbury Park. Zacarias Moussaoui, a French Algerian who has been charged with
being part of the team that hijacked the planes which hit the twin towers (the
authorities say he was arrested on other charges before he could join the
hijackers on the planes), had worshipped there. So had Richard Reid, the
British-born convert to Islam who tried to blow himself up on a transatlantic
jet in December 2001, and Nizar Trabelsi, a Tunisian-born former professional
footballer and drug addict who was sentenced to 10 years in prison by a Belgian
court for plotting to blow himself up outside the American embassy in Paris.
Many of the Britons who ended up in Guantanamo Bay were found to have spent time
at the mosque - as had a series of other militants picked up around the world.
The American indictment alleges further activities at the mosque. Much of the
material it contains is based on the testimony of James Ujaama, a one-time
associate of Abu Hamza who was 'turned' by an American policeman. Ujaama, whose
20 years' sentence was cut to two years as an incentive to give evidence against
Abu Hamza, was released the day Abu Hamza was arrested. Ujaama speaks of
volunteers packed off to Afghanistan to undergo military training.
Abu Hamza has tried to keep a low profile over the last three years. In his
public statements he has tried to stress that he is 'no threat to the UK' and
has accused the media of hugely inflating his power. But when preaching in
private he has been less circumspect. Tapes show him exhorting audiences to
violent struggle and 'martyrdom' in Kashmir, Chechnya and Afghanistan and,
particularly, in 'their homelands'.
'You don't have to travel thousands and thousands of miles to become a martyr -
you can be a martyr right on your doorstep,' Abu Hamza says in one. Jews are
evil and promote a 'Satanic ideology', he says in another.
Such statements, coupled with widespread reporting of the benefits payments that
Abu Hamza receives, have pressured the government to act. Last year David
Blunkett introduced legislation specifically aimed at Abu Hamza in order to
strip him of his British citizenship. This would allow him to be deported or
detained without trial as a foreign terrorist suspect. This process, already
under way, would have taken years and the American extradition request has saved
the Home Secretary the trouble. Last week he was finally where Blunkett wanted
him - Belmarsh.
The American authorities hope his trial will provide a view of a genuine
terrorist. But experts point out that, even if proved true, the acts alleged in
the indictment took place some time ago. 'If they consider the imprisonment of
Abu Hamza a genuinely significant achievement in the war on terror, then we
should be very worried,' one analyst said. 'Serious terrorists don't stand in
streets and lead prayers.'