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January 19, 2006

UK: Muslim Cleric Hamza Testifies, Says He Preached The Koran

Today, Abu Hamza took to the witness stand in his trial at London's Old Bailey. The trial commenced last Monday, but today was the first time he spoke.

We described earlier the opening statements from prosecutor David Perry, who quoted from Hamza's own videotapes of his sermons.

We gave more details, and quotes from his video statements, on Friday. Since then, more video footage was played to the jury. Associated Press via Gay365.com noted on Monday that Hamza had made bizarre claims about Israel.

Speaking in a video from 2000, Hamza states that Western leaders deal with Israel, not from genuine approval, but because Israel contains incriminating information, which it uses to blackmail them into accepting its existence.

"Now all these dogs of the West, they have to go now, none of them have condemned what Israel has done to the Muslims and the Palestinians," he stated. "Why they act like sugar daddy for Israel? Because they love the Israelis? No way! Because they hate them very much, but the Israelis know how to deal with them."

"They got a file for each one of these politicians, how much homosexual you are, how many money he has taken as bribe, whom his wife goes with, which child he has been abusing, and they got all this against them," he claimed, adding "Jews know how to control people."

On Tuesday, the Times described statements from another video sermon, made in 1998 in Birmingham, perhaps in a domestic residence. He urged his followers to go to Albania and Kosovo to support the Muslim cause. He then reminisced on his own jihadist experiences in Bosnia.

He claimed that he had given advice to Algerian fighters in Bosnia, and had arguments about policy with other Mujahideen. "As Allah is my witness, I had to leave Bosnia straight away." he said.

On his co-jihadists in Bosnia, he said: "They are very good brothers, they are fighting the best fighters, they are the best people to sacrifice but when it came to management they reached the wrong conclusions."

He gave advice on education in another sermon, from 2000, made at the mosque in Finsbury Park. After stating that fighters should remain in small mountain-based units and saying they should avoid the influence of rich Saudi benefactors, he suggested his audience could travel to troubled nations. He said: "Any brothers that can go there we can employ them to work there. You can teach people English but instead of teaching 'John kissed Rebecca', you tell them 'Abdul killed Richard', something like that."

In another video from the mosque from 2000, he spoke of sacrifice. "You must have a stand with your heart, with your tongue, with your money, with your hand, with your sword, with your Kalashnikov. Anything that will help the intifada, just do it. If it is killing, do it. If it is paying, pay, if it is ambushing, ambush, if it is poisoning, poison. You help your brothers, you help Islam in any way you like it, anywhere you like it. They are all kuffar (unbelievers) and they are all acting and fighting us as one body and we should give them back as one body."

The Guardian reported that on Tuesday, the jury watched a 90 minute tape in which Abu Hamza described six "enemies of Islam". Apostates and Jews were top of this list.

The first enemy types were "tyrants and apostates of our leaders." Then followed "Jews number two, Christians number three, evil scholars of Muslims number four, hypocrites number five, ignorance of our umma [the Muslim community] number six.

He said Allah had described Jews as offspring of monkeys. He claimed Jews were the "first monkey and the first ape", claimed Darwin's grandfather was a Jew, which was why Charles Darwin "wanted to establish a link between human beings and monkeys."

On Wednesday, the Times reported that the court was told that Hamza's 10 volume guide to warfare, jihad, bomb-making and bombing techniques, the Encyclopedio of the Afghani Jihad had already been taken from him by the police. This happened seven years ago in 1999, but the book was given back to him.

There had originally been 11 volumes, prosecutor David Perry stated, but when Hamza's West London was searched again in May 2004, Volume Six - "Bombs and Landmines" had gone missing. Hamza had told police he never read the books. They had been given as a present, and he kept them "as part of history", he had claimed.

600 videotapes had been taken from Abu Hamza's home in the raid from March 1999, but like the "Encyclopedia", these were returned to Abu Hamza.

Today, the Times describes Hamza's appearance at the stand, dressed in a blue suit, with his stumps tucked into his pockets. His lawyer, Ed Fitzgerald, asked him if he had incited folloers to kill in England. Hamza denied this. When asked if he had ever urged his audience to kill abroad, Hamza said "In the concept of murder, no. In the concept of fighting, yes."

Reuters and the Times describe the efforts by Fitzgerald to portray Hamza as a misunderstood victim. He said Hamza has been a target of "exaggeration and misrepresentation by innuendo" by the media.

"Mr Hamza is probably the most frequently abused and ridiculed person in this country. They call him Captain Hook. Hook. Hooky.... They run headlines like "Hook Off", Fitzgerald said. "They may have condemned him before the trial began. But they haven't seen the evidence. You have."

Fitzgerald agreed that Hamza had encouraged Jihad in his sermons. But he said that the Jihad referred to battles in distant regions, Kosovo, Bosnia, Afghanistan (where Hamza had fought himself, and lost both hands and his left eye), Algeria and Israel.

"Not every killing can be called murder. Soldiers who kill on the battlefield are not guilty of murder. Combatants... are not guilty of murder," Hamza's lawyer claimed. "There is no simple equation: he talks of killing, he must be inciting murder."

On the issue of the Encyclopedia, Fitzgerald said that the book had not been confiscated by police after it was taken away in 1999. He said: "When they (the police) returned it to him they didn't say, 'look, that's a crime'. He had it only because they gave it back to him in 1999."

The Guardian noted that during Fitzgerald's questions, Hamza stated "If you are a scholar you will never distinguish between anyone of any colour. Racism is one of the greatest sins. I actually condemned it. We have been told to hate it as wrong, even if it comes from our own fathers, we have to denounce it."

Fitzgerald told jurors that Hamza's comments about Jews were made in a historical. religious context. "He is not anti-Semitic" the QC announced.

Mr Hamza said he was born in Egypt in 1958 and spent his early life there before moving, aged 21, to the UK in 1979. He took an engineering degree at Brighton Polytechnic and in 1989 took up a job as a civil engineer at the Sandhurst Royal Military Academy. The court heard that Hamza was responsible for maintaining the fence and a variety of buildings.

Mr Fitzgerald asked the defendant whether he had kept drawings of the academy after leaving the job, and he replied: "Yes."

He said police seized the diagrams when they searched his house in 1999, but later returned them. When they searched his property again in May 2004 they did not remove the documents, the court heard.

Hamza faces 9 charges of soliciting murder, under the 1861 Offences Against the Person Act. He is charged on four counts under the 1986 Public Order Act, of inciting racial hatred with words or behaviour. He is charged with possessing audio and video recordings designed to stir up racial hatred. He is charged on one count under Section 58 of the Terrorism Act 2000, for possessing information "of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism". This charge involves the Encyclopedia.

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at January 19, 2006 8:06 PM

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