Abu Hamza al-Masri
Abu Hamza al-Masri is a radical Islamist cleric.[1]
Abu Hamza was born Mustafa Kamel Mustafa in Alexandria, Egypt, on 15 April 1958. His father was a naval officer and his mother was a primary school headmistress.[2]
He emigrated to England in 1979.[3]
In 1987, Hamza met Sheikh Abdullah Azzam, the founder of the Afghan Mujahideen, while undertaking the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca.[4]
He visited Peshawar and Afghanistan in 1990.[5] He emigrated to Afghanistan in 1991.[6] Whilst in Afghanistan, he lost an eye and both hands in an explosion. According to some accounts, he was blown up by a mine while involved in construction or mine clearing operations. Other sources describe an accident while mixing explosives. He returned to Britain in 1993.[7]
Abu Hamza travelled to Bosnia in 1995 under name Adam Ramsay Eaman.[8]
In March 1997, Hamza was appointed the Friday preacher at Finsbury Park mosque.[9]
In 1997, he was contacted by MI5.[10]
At a US trial in 2014, Hamza's lawyer said that he 'was an intermediary, that MI5 asked him on multiple times to act in hostage situations, cool down the community and maintain a sense of order," he argued.' The trial judge subsequently ruled that Hamza could not testify about his dealings with British intelligence.[11]
External Resources
- Cahal Milmo, MI5 approved my preaching, Abu Hamza tells Old Bailey, Independent, 20 January 2006.
- Duncan Campbell, Vikram Dodd and Tania Branigan, Guilty: the cleric who preached murder as a religious duty, The Guardian, 8 February 2006.
Notes
- ↑ Profile: Abu Hamza, BBC, 5 November 2010.
- ↑ Profile: Abu Hamza, BBC, 5 November 2010.
- ↑ Profile: Abu Hamza, BBC, 5 November 2010.
- ↑ Profile: Abu Hamza, BBC, 5 November 2010.
- ↑ Sean O'Neill and Daniel McGrory, The Suicide Factory: Abu Hamza and the Finsbury Park Mosque, Harper Perennial, 2006, p.18.
- ↑ Profile: Abu Hamza, BBC, 5 November 2010.
- ↑ Sean O'Neill and Daniel McGrory, The Suicide Factory: Abu Hamza and the Finsbury Park Mosque, Harper Perennial, 2006, pp.22-29.
- ↑ Sean O'Neill and Daniel McGrory, The Suicide Factory: Abu Hamza and the Finsbury Park Mosque, Harper Perennial, 2006, p.30.
- ↑ Sean O'Neill and Daniel McGrory, The Suicide Factory: Abu Hamza and the Finsbury Park Mosque, Harper Perennial, 2006, p.30.
- ↑ Profile: Abu Hamza, BBC, 5 November 2010.
- ↑ Philip Sherwell, Abu Hamza 'secretly worked for MI5' to 'keep streets of London safe', The Telegraph, 7 May 2014.