New York: British hate preacher Abu Hamza goes on trial in New York on Monday, facing the rest of his life behind bars if found guilty on kidnapping and terror charges that predate the 9/11 attacks.
It is the second high-profile terror trial to be heard by a Manhattan jury since Osama Bin Laden’s son-in-law and former Al Qaida spokesman Suleiman Abu Ghaith was convicted on March 26.
Mustafa Kamel Mustafa, better known in Britain as Abu Hamza Al Masri, is blind in one eye and lost both arms, blown off above the elbow, in an explosion in Afghanistan years ago.
His trial will begin with jury selection on Monday and is the culmination of a 10-year legal battle.
On its second day, Tuesday, he will celebrate his 56th birthday.
Abu Hamza was first indicted in the United States in 2004 and served eight years in prison in Britain before losing his last appeal in the European Court of Human Rights against extradition.
In the US, authorities lost no time removing his trademark prosthetic hook that he wore in the place of one hand.
He is charged on 11 counts, over the 1998 kidnapping in Yemen of 16 Western tourists, of whom four were killed, and of conspiring to set up an Al Qaida-style training camp in Oregon in late 1999.
He is accused of providing material support to Bin Laden’s terror network, of wanting to set up a computer lab for the Taliban and sending recruits for terror training in Afghanistan.
Born in Egypt, Abu Hamza moved to London aged 21 to study engineering before he morphed into an anti-American preacher at the Finsbury Park Mosque in north London.
The mosque has been dubbed a breeding ground for terrorism and was frequented by Richard Reid, serving a life sentence in the US for trying to blow up a transatlantic jetliner in 2001.
Abu Hamza, who has asked to be addressed during the trial by his real name Mustafa, has pleaded not guilty.
“I think I am innocent,” he told a pre-trial conference.
