Islamist Mullah Heading To New York for Terror Trial
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

One of the world’s most dangerous Islamist mullahs, the one-eyed, hook-handed Abu Hamza al-Masri, will soon be brought to New York to be tried for 11 serious terrorist charges.
The Egyptian-born Mr. Hamza has lost his final appeal against extradition from Britain, where he is already serving a seven-year prison sentence for inciting murder and race hatred. If found guilty at his New York trial, he faces a further 100 years in jail.
It has taken three years to bring the radical Muslim cleric to America to face justice, as he had to face trial first in Britain. In February 2006 he was found guilty on 11 of 15 counts.
Mr. Hamza, a former nightclub bouncer who was born Mustafa Kamel Mustafa, was arrested in London in May 2004 after Attorney General Ashcroft requested his extradition on charges including conspiracy to take hostages and hostage-taking in connection with an attack in Yemen in December 1998 in which four Western captives were killed; conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists in Afghanistan, and providing support and resources to Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
A British senior district judge, Timothy Workman, approved Mr. Hamza’s extradition yesterday, with the defendant appearing on a video link from London’s top-security Belmarsh prison. He will be brought to America as soon as the British home secretary, Jacqui Smith, gives her assent, which is expected to be a formality.
Mr. Hamza’s defense lawyer, Alun Jones, said yesterday that he would appeal against the decision to extradite and would try to have the case heard in Britain.
Mr. Hamza, who is nicknamed “Dr. Hook” by the British press, once presided over the Finsbury Park mosque in north London, where he became famous for urging violent jihad and preaching Islamism.
Among those who attended the mosque were the shoe bomber Richard Reid; the jailed plotter of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on America, Zacarias Moussaoui; and three of those responsible for the attacks of July 7, 2005, in London.
Mr. Hamza has called the Iraq war a “war against Islam,” claimed September 11 was a Jewish plot, and described the Columbia space shuttle disaster as “punishment from Allah.”
Mr. Hamza is charged with sending an associate to collect funds from sympathetic Muslims in New York that were used to send two co-conspirators to Afghanistan to recruit a “front line commander” to direct acts of violent jihad in the West.
The charges were the result of an extended investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Joint Terrorism Task Force in New York City, and the New York City Police Department.
The terrorism charges against Mr. Hamza relate to a period in late 1999 and early 2000 in Bly, Ore., when he is accused of trying to set up camps to train youths to commit violent acts of jihad and terrorism. In April 2004 the cleric was the subject of an 11-count indictment returned by a federal grand jury in the Southern District of New York.
According to Mr. Ashcroft, between December 23 and 29, 1998, Mr. Hamza plotted to take Westerners hostage in Yemen and provided a satellite telephone to members of the Islamic Army of Aden, who carried out the kidnapping.
The hostages were taken in the hope of trading them for the release of Mr. Hamza’s stepson, Mohsen Ghailan, and five other Britons, who were in prison in Yemen for terrorist acts.
The indictment alleges that a day before the terrorists stormed a caravan of tourist vehicles and took 16 hostages, including two Americans, Mr. Hamza received three calls from the telephone.
Mr. Hamza is said to have received another call from the same telephone on December 28, a day after the attack, when he agreed to act as an intermediary between the terrorists and the authorities, and added $1,000 worth of credit to the telephone account.
The following day, December 29, when Yemeni forces stormed the terrorists’ hideout, four of the 16 hostages, three Britons and an Australian, were used as human shields and were shot dead. Several other hostages were seriously wounded.
The following year, in October 1999, it is suggested that Mr. Hamza was informed that Islamist terrorists were stockpiling weapons in Bly, Ore., and that he received a fax urging him to help set up a terrorist training camp there.
Mr. Hamza’s lawyers claim that evidence against their client was gained through the use of torture, but prosecutor Hugo Keith, representing the U.S. Department of Justice, said the case will be based on telephone records and the mullah’s admission of his involvement.