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File photo: Abu Hamza al-Masri (AP Photo/Alastair Grant)
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INDEPTH: OSAMA BIN LADEN
Abu Hamza al-Masri: Britain's radical cleric
CBC News Online | February 7, 2006
Abu Hamza al-Masri was born into a middle-class life in Alexandria, Egypt in 1958. His birth name was Mustafa Kamel Mustafa. He changed it after he became more heavily involved in his Islamic faith in the 1980s.
The son of an army officer left Egypt to study civil engineering in Britain in 1979. There, he met and married a British woman, Valerie Fleming. For a time, he worked as a bouncer at a London nightclub as he pursued his studies. After marrying Fleming, he obtained a British citizenship.
Al-Masri and Fleming would have one son before they divorced in 1986. Fleming said they split up after her husband's beliefs became far more fundamentalist. He would later remarry and have seven children.
In the late 1980s, Al-Masri became drawn to Afghanistan and the struggle to establish an Islamic state there. He had served as a translator for mujahedeen fighters who had been wounded fighting Soviet troops occupying Afghanistan. They had travelled to London for treatment.
The connection led to a meeting in 1987 with Sheik Abdullah Azzam, the founder of the Afghan mujahideen. Soon after, he set off for Afghanistan, with no intention of returning to Britain.
While there, he was involved in several reconstruction projects in the Jalalabad area. As part of his job, he was involved in clearing landmines. One of them went off, and he lost both hands and an eye. Both hands were equipped with hooks. Years later, British tabloids would dub al-Masri "Dr. Hook."
He returned to Britain in 1993 to seek treatment for his injuries. In 1995, he founded the Supporters of Sharia, a group dedicated to establishing Islamic states ruled by Islamic law. He also hit the road one more time. This time, he travelled to Bosnia to support Muslims there at the height of the breakup of the former Yugoslavia.
When he returned to Britain, he spent more of his time preaching and putting out literature that called for the overthrow of corrupt regimes in the Middle East.
In 1997, al-Masri arrived at the Finsbury Mosque in North London — the scene of most of the preaching that caught the attention of British security officials. He eventually became the imam there.
Al-Masri was on the radar of security officials since 1997. He was questioned about an attack in Luxor, Egypt in which extremists killed 68 tourists. Two years later, he became the prime suspect in an alleged plot to overthrow the government of Yemen. He was released but his son — Mohammed Mustafa Kamel — was jailed in Yemen for three years.
Al-Masri was suspected of wanting to set up an Islamic state in Yemen, with the hope that neighbouring countries would be destabilized and ripe for an Islamic regime to move in.
The Finsbury Mosque continued to attract a lot of attention as al-Masri consolidated his hold on it. He was accused of pushing out members who did not support his form of Islam, while encouraging those who shared his views. He delivered almost all of the sermons at the mosque.
Among the congregants associated with the mosque were Richard Reid, the Briton accused of trying to detonate a bomb in his shoe on a plane, and Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person charged criminally by the United States in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks.
A year after those attacks, al-Masri helped put together a conference at the mosque praising the hijackers.
At his trial, the jury heard several taped speeches he made while imam at Finsbury. In one, he said of the enemies of Islam:
"You imagine you have only one small knife and you have a big animal in the front of you. The size of the knife, you can't slaughter him with this. You have to stab him here and there until he bleeds to death, until he dies, then you can cut his meat the way you like or leave it for the maggots."
The Crown argued that al-Masri used his leadership position to encourage congregants to murder non-Muslims.
Al-Masri has always denied that he supported terror or incited anyone to violence.
"I never advocated violence against British people," he told an audience in London in February, 2003.
A month earlier, he had been effectively removed as imam at the Finsbury Mosque after police raided the building. They sealed the building and handed control of it back to the trustees whose authority al-Masri had usurped. Despite that, al-Masri continued to preach outside the mosque until he was arrested and detained in May 2004 on a U.S. warrant.
Washington wants to try him on charges of trying to set up a terrorist training camp in Oregon and for providing aid for al-Qaeda.
In August 2004, British authorities formally charged him under the Terrorism Act with soliciting murder, inciting racial hatred and possessing a terrorist document (the Encyclopedia of the Afghani Jihad). On Feb. 7, 2006, he was convicted and sentenced to seven years in prison. He faced a maximum sentence of life.
When he gets out, Washington would like to get him into an American courtroom. That may be difficult — Britain won't extradite a suspect if that person will face charges that could carry the death penalty.
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