This article is from the source 'guardian' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/19/abu-hamza-found-guilty-terrorism-charges

The article has changed 7 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 0 Version 1
Abu Hamza found guilty of terrorism charges at New York trial Abu Hamza found guilty of terrorism charges at New York trial
(35 minutes later)
The radical Islamic cleric Abu Hamza, known for his inflammatory rhetoric, was found guilty of terrorism charges in New York on Monday. Abu Hamza al-Masri, the radical Islamist cleric notorious for hate-filled sermons, was facing life in a top-security US prison on Monday after being convicted of all charges after a four-week terrorism trial in New York.
The Egyptian-born cleric, 56, whose birth name is Mustafa Kamel Mustafa, had been charged with creating an al-Qaida training camp in Bly, Oregon, in late 1999 and early 2000. He was also charged with helping kidnappers in a 1998 hostage-taking in Yemen that left four people dead, and raising money to send militants to Afghanistan. The Egyptian-born cleric, 56, who was an imam at the Finsbury Park mosque in north London in the 1990s, was found guilty by a jury in a Manhattan federal court near the scene of the 9/11 terror attacks on the World Trade Center.
Hamza, the former imam of the Finsbury Park mosque in north London, was extradited to the US after an eight-year battle in 2012, after serving prison time in the UK for inciting his followers to kill non-Muslims. The jury of eight men and four women took just 11 hours over two days to reach their verdict on the complex case.
More details soon ... Hamza was accused of being a terrorist of global reach, and was charged providing material support to terrorist organizations by enabling hostage-takers in the Yemen kidnapping to speak on a satellite phone, by sending men to establish an al-Qaida training camp in Bly, Oregon, and by sending at least one man to training camps in Afghanistan.
His conviction, on all 11 charges, marks the end of a 10-year mission by American authorities to bring him to justice on US soil.
Hamza, who was tried under his real name of Mustapha Kamel Mustapha, was finally extradited in 2012 from the UK, where he led the Finsbury Park Mosque, reportedly attended by both 9/11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui and shoe bomber Richard Reid. Hamza denied that he ever met them.
Hamza looked straight ahead as the verdict was read.
The jury at Manhattan’s federal court agreed with the prosecution claims that Hamza was a “trainer of terrorists” who recruited and indoctrinated young men at the London mosque as part of his global empire.
In his opening statement, Edward Kim, assistant district attorney for the southern district of New York, also said that Hamza used the cover of religion to “hide in plain sight” under the noses of the British authorities for years.
Hamza was convicted of 11 counts of criminal conduct related to the taking of 16 hostages in Yemen in 1998 that left three Britons and an Australian dead. He was also found guilty of advocating violent jihad in Afghanistan in 2001 and conspiring to establish a jihad training camp in Oregon between June 2000 and December 2001.
During the trial Hamza’s defence team tried to claim that the prosecution case, which included videos of his sermons, was just about “words, not deeds”. They described him as an “independent thinker” and “his own man”. His defence team argued that the jury may not have liked the views he espoused, but that they did not amount to crimes.
His defence lawyer Joshua Dratel told them: “These are views, not acts. This is expression, not crimes.”
For much of the past five weeks, jurors watched videotapes and heard audio clips of sermons and interviews in which Hamza ranted at his followers, telling them non-Muslims could be treated like animals “like cows, like pigs” and women and children who were not Muslim could be taken captive.
Hamza, who testified for four days, insisted that he did not take part in acts of terror of support al-Qaida. But he also insisted that, even today, he loved Osama bin Laden and that he thought 9/11 was a good thing.
Hamza, who told the jury that he lost both hands and an eye in an accident in Pakistan, wrote a series of letters to district judge Katherine Forrest saying his evidence would be “important for historians” and overruling his lawyers’ objections to him talking about anything not strictly to do with the case.
His testimony over four days was derided by assistant US attorney Ian McGinley, who told jurors to ignore his “lies” and concentrate on the evidence. In his closing argument, McGinley read the names of four European tourists who died in 1998 in Yemen after their convoy of cars was overtaken by extremist Islamic kidnappers whom Hamza had given the satellite phone. McGinley said a guilty verdict would provide a measure of justice for them and another dozen hostages who survived. "Don't be fooled by his testimony," McGinley said. "Don't let the passage of time diminish what he did."
The jury heard from two women who were hostages in Yemen testified. One of them, Margaret Thompson, of Texas, who was shot in the leg in a shootout between Yemeni forces and the kidnappers, limped into the courtroom to describe her harrowing 24-hour ordeal.
Mary Quin, a US citizen who now lives in New Zealand, told the court that she escaped one kidnapper by putting her foot against his head and wrestling away his assault rifle after he was knocked to the ground by a bullet.
The government played clips of a taped interview Quin conducted with Hamza in his London mosque as she prepared to write a book about the kidnapping. McGinley told jurors Hamza boasted to Quin about the kidnappings, saying: "Islamically, it is a good thing." McGinley said that statement belied Mustafa's claims that when he spoke to the lead kidnapper during the crisis, he tried to be a peacemaker.
"No one who actually tried to be a peacemaker would say to a victim of that kidnapping that it was a good thing," he said.
The prosecutor acknowledged Mustafa's speaking skills, saying he was "good with words," but also warned: "Don't buy it."
Judge Forrest banned him from discussing his supposed links with MI5 or Scotland Yard. Dratel had had told the court that he had 50 pages of notes from meetings between Hamza and British intelligence agencies between 1997 and 2000 which had been handed to him by the UK.
Dratel said this showed a “constant dialogue” between them Hamza – but the jury never got to hear it. As a result Hamza was left claiming that he was just the “mouthpiece” for the Yemeni kidnappers and nothing else, a role he likened to that of Gerry Adams with the IRA.
He claimed that he tried to “de-escalate” the situation and told the jury he had nothing to do with the camp in Oregon and did not send anyone to fight with al-Qaida in Afghanistan.