Kill and be killed: how cleric raised generation of terrorists

There was also a handful of young men, born and brought up in Yorkshire, who would detonate homemade bombs among rush-hour passengers in London, killing 52 people on July 7 last year.

As Abu Hamza began his seven-year jail sentence last night what still worries the intelligence agencies is that they neither know the identities nor the whereabouts of hundreds of other recruits who passed through the mosque.

There was nothing in Abu Hamza’s early years to suggest that he would become a talent spotter for al-Qaeda and other terror organisations.

He was born Mostafa Kemal Mostafa in 1958 in Egypt, the son of an army officer who enjoyed a comfortable and cosseted life until he emigrated to Britain in 1979 as a student, keen to enjoy the pleasures of the West. The young Mostafa was a handsome man, with bulging biceps who wore T-shirts and jeans and enjoyed a reputation as a womaniser.

He worked as a hotel night porter and later as a Soho nightclub bouncer and within a year had married an Englishwoman, Valerie Traverso (now known as Fleming). After their wedding he wasted no time in seeking British nationality.

The couple had one son before they divorced in 1984. Within three months he married, in an Islamic ceremony, his second wife, Nagat.

His interest in religion, he claims, began as a reaction to the racism encountered on Britain’s streets. Between 1986 and 1989 he studied civil engineering at Brighton Polytechnic, earning a second-class degree.

He spent hours memorising the Koran and in 1987 he went on the haj to Saudi Arabia where he met Abdullah Azzam, the Palestinian theologian who inspired the Mujahidin fighting the Soviet Army, but who more importantly was Osama bin Laden’s mentor.

In 1991 Abu Hamza packed everything he owned into a shipping container and emigrated to Afghanistan, now under Taleban rule, to work as an engineer. Two years later he lost both hands and an eye in an explosion, suggesting that it was caused by a landmine which detonated when he was drawing a sketch for workers on a dusty roadway near Jalalabad.

Other stories hint that he was making or holding a bomb. Whatever the truth, he was lucky to survive.

Abu Hamza came back to London for medical treatment and immersed himself in his faith. In 1995 he travelled to Bosnia as a relief worker where he fraternised with Arab militias fighting the Serbs. By 1996 he was back in Britain, living in Shepherd’s Bush, West London, and preaching at Luton Central mosque. He was already attracting crowds of young radicals there when the invitation came to take over the new North London Central mosque, as Finsbury Park mosque was properly known.

The Prince of Wales was among those who lobbied for it to be built and King Fahd of Saudi Arabia paid for it. Abu Hamza turned the four-storey redbrick building, half a mile from Arsenal’s Highbury stadium, into a safe haven and training ground for jihad and terrorism. Under his stewardship recruits were identified and indoctrinated; large sums raised for armed groups and documents forged for travel to training camps.

A letter of referral from Abu Hamza carried influence in al-Qaeda camps. The UN Security Council lists him as No 134 on its list of known associates of bin Laden’s terror group.

His arrival at Finsbury Park electrified a young congregation tired of dull sermons from elderly imams who couldn’t speak English. “The first time I saw him was on the first Friday he preached at the mosque. Everyone was really excited,” Reda Hassaine, a security services informant, said. “He was this big, broad man with a black beard and he set everyone buzzing when he spoke: ‘We are the Mujahidin, this mosque is for the Mujahidin’.”

Abu Hamza’s preaching was not restricted to the plight of oppressed Muslims. The moral bankruptcy of the West was another common theme: England was “a toilet”, its churches full of black magic and child abuse.

He roamed the country preaching sermons that seethed with hatred for homosexuals and non-believers, bankers and brothel-keepers, and most especially Jews, who he called “sons of monkeys and pigs”. Mostly, however, he emphasised the need for Muslims to “fight and kill the infidels wherever you find them”.

The mosque also became a centre for sophisticated crime — credit card forgery, benefit scams and organised shoplifting — which raised millions of pounds for terrorist groups from Kashmir to Chechnya.

Yet throughout this period Abu Hamza was in regular contact with Special Branch and MI5 who adopted a policy of monitoring rather than intervention. The accepted wisdom was that he was a harmless fool; his outlandish appearance made him a scary tabloid villain but not a real danger. Police now admit that that judgment was wrong. A source said last night: “It would be a mistake to regard him as a buffoon, however tempting . . . To say he was divorced from operational terrorism would be wrong.”

Abu Hamza first achieved notoriety in December 1998 when 16 Western tourists were kidnapped in Yemen in retaliation for the arrest of a group of young Britons accused of plotting to bomb UK targets in Aden, including an Anglican church. The Britons included Abu Hamza’s son and stepson.

The cleric was arrested in March 1999 when it was revealed that he had been in direct contact with the kidnap gang, whose leaders were arrested after a shoot-out in which four tourists died. However, he was released without charge.

The uneasy stand-off between Abu Hamza and the British authorites remained until the September 11 atrocities changed attitudes to Islamist terror and Britain awoke to the realisation that it had become a haven for violent extremists. Britain’s role in the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq prompted Islamic extremists, some schooled by Abu Hamza, to identify it as a legitimate target.

The Old Bailey jury was not told the names of the Abu Hamza supporters who went on to take part in terror operations. Some died in suicide attacks abroad, or perished fighting in obscure battlefields in Chech-nya, Afghanistan and Kashmir.

Others, such as Richard Reid, would grab the headlines. He tried to blow himself up on a packed passenger plane over the Atlantic in December 2001.

The one-time petty crook from South London and a convert to Islam in prison spent weeks living at the mosque. He travelled the world as an al-Qaeda scout before trying to bomb an American Airlines plane with plastic explosive in the soles of his baseball boots. He is now serving an 80-year jail sentence in America.

Another behind bars in America is Zacarias Moussaoui, a London university student who this week screamed: “I am al-Qaeda” at a jury deciding whether he should be executed or face life imprisonment for his involvement in 9/11.

Kamel Bourgass, an Algerian, who along with many of his fellow countrymen squatted at the mosque, murdered Detective Constable Stephen Oake in Manchester in January 2003 after fleeing London when his plan to make ricin and other toxins was uncovered. Feroz Abbasi, a computer student from Croydon, boasts of being a disciple of Abu Hamza who he claims helped him to get to a terror training camp in Afghanistan. He was captured near Kandahar in 2001 and spent three years at Guantanamo Bay.

Omar Sharif, from Derby, died from drowning in May 2003 after his suicide bomb failed to detonate as he entered a seaside bar in Tel Aviv, Israel. Sharif had been to the mosque and was in correspondence with Abu Hamza about using “jihad as a method to establish the Islamic state”.

A letter, with Sharif’s e-mail address and Derby phone number, was found in Finsbury Park mosque when it was raided by police on January 26, 2003. That raid led to the mosque being shut down for 18 months. But it was a case of the authorities reacting too late.

TRAIL OF TERROR

1958 born Mostafa Kemal Mostafa in Alexandria, Egypt

1979 emigrates to Britain; works as bouncer in Soho 1980 meets and marries Valerie Traverso

1984 divorces; takes custody of son

1985 marries Nagat Mostafa in Islamic ceremony

1986 British citizenship

1987 meets Abdullah Azzam, father of jihadi movement, on haj

1989 graduates in civil engineering, Brighton Poly

1990 construction project engineer at Sandhurst

1991 emigrates to Afghanistan as engineer

1993 loses arms and left eye in explosion; returns to Britain

1995 in Bosnia with Arab Mujahidin

1996 preaching in Luton

1997 becomes khatib of Finsbury Park Mosque

1998 son and stepson among ten men sent for jihad training in Yemen

1999 arrested over Yemen incident but released without charge

2001 describes 9/11 hijackers as martyrs who acted in self-defence

2002 conference titled A Towering Day in History marks anniversary of 9/11 at Finsbury Park

2003 Finsbury Park mosque is raided and shut; preaches outside in street

2004 arrested on US extradition warrant; later charged under British law with soliciting murder

2005 July 7 bombs in London; Abu Hamza in dock at Old Bailey on same day