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June 1, 2006
UK: Authorities Blatantly Ignored Abu Hamza's Islamist Criminality
The UK Times today reports that though they had received numerous warnings about the radical Muslim preacher Abu Hamza, they chose to look the other way. And while Hamza was allowed to preach in Finsbury Park Mosque that it was acceptable to kill non-Muslims, they did nothing. Hamza's preachings helped to radicalise potential suicide bombers such as Richard Reid and Zacaras Moussaoui. Three of the four suicide bombers who blasted London Transport on July 7 last year, Mohammad Sidique Khan, Shehzad Tanweer and Jermaine Lindsay, had attended Finsbury Park Mosque to listen to his sermons.
A sign that something was wrong was all too evident to the public. I used to regularly catch the 106 bus from Stoke Newington. But when Hamza had finally been expelled by the mosque's trustees, he then took over a public street. There, he and his followers regularly blocked the road for their "prayers", and quite often the bus journey, which had to be re-routed, was delayed. Police were in attendance, but did nothing to stop a blatant illegal breach of public order.
Irrespective of the message that this laissez-faire attitude gave to the general public, and also the green light that it gave to other radical Islamists to flout the law, and irrespective of the weak police arguments that it was better to keep things "in the open", the situation has not helped Britain in any way. An entire generation of young Muslims has been exposed to Hamza's polluting influences.
Finally, when Hamza was jailed for seven years on February 7, convicted of solicitiing murder and inciting racial hatred, some unpleasant facts were disclosed. Finsbury Park Mosque had been raided in 2003, and an assortment of items were found. These included three starting pistols, which could easily be reassigned to firing live rounds, a stun gun, knives, CS gas and chemical and nuclear warfare protective suits. Also, hidden behind ceiling tiles, dozens of forged documents were discovered, including driving licences and passports. One can only imagine what their real purpose was.
The Times today and yesterday has been publishing extracts from a new book called The Suicide Factory: Abu Hamza and the Finsbury Park Mosque. Written by Sean O'Neill and Daniel McGrory, it will be published by HarperCollins on June 19.
Today the authors describe how for twenty years Abu Hamza exploited the lax approach of Britain's government departments. In 1980, Hamza was arrested as an illegal immigrant. He had overstayed his visa. No-one bothered to question the validity of his marriage to Valerie Traverso, a British national, even though it appears now to have been bigamous.
In the mid-1980s various imams from mosques in diverse locations had reported him to the police for his bullying behaviour. When he took over the mosque in Finsbury Park, one of the management committee, Abdulkadir Barkatullah, complained seven times to the police. But nothing was done.
Intelligence agencies from France, Spain, Germany, Italy, Belgium and the Netherlands reported that Hamza was head of a terrorist organisation. The French and Algerian authorities had even planted spies in the mosque to document his activities, but British authorities did nothing. Egypt (his home country) wanted Hamza back to stand trial, and offered a prisoner exchange. This too was ignored.
In 1998, Hamza was involved with the kidnapping of 16 tourists in Yemen. He bought a satellite phone and gave 500 pounds' worth of airtime to the kidnappers. Though the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) in Cheltenham intercepted and monitored these phone conversations, nothing was done.
16 tourists, 12 Britons, two Australians, two Americans, as well as their 4 Yemeni drivers, were taken hostage in Abyan, Yemen, on 28 December 1998. Within two days, three Britons and one Australian were dead. According to Al-Bab.com
According to an interview with al-Wasat magazine (11.1.99), Abu al-Hassan (the kidnappers' leader) told Abu Hamza he had been hoping the tourists would be mainly Americans, and seemed disappointed. The British cleric urged against harming the hostages and Abu al-Hassan agreed, saying that wanted to exchange them for nine Islamists who were under arrest.
Because phone-taps are not acceptable in a UK court of law, no action was taken. But the FBI, state O'Neill and McGrory, are not so cautious. They have said that if they succeed in gaining the extradition of Hamza, they will employ the phone-tap evidence from GCHQ in their prosecution. Following the Yemen kidnap, Hamza's house was searched in March 1999.
During the raid, tapes were found of his sermons, which eventually became used in his trial, seven years thence. Police also found the terrorist manual, the 11 volume Encyclopaedia of Afghani Jihad, which would also be cited in court. The three tapes and the eleven manuals were returned to Hamza. A passport in the name of Adam Ramsay Eaman had been found in the raid. Hamza had used this to travel to Bosnia in 1995, but though a blatantly illegal act, Hamza was not prosecuted.
A former Home Secretary, David Blunkett, claims that he was never given details of Hamza's activities, and assumed that the imam was just a "bigmouth". He says that British authorities were nervous about taking any action against Hamza as he was a religious leader of a minority faith. It seems they deemed it more important to avoid any accusations of Islamophobia than to protect British and international interests.
The Americans could not believe the easy ride Hamza was being given. One official in the US Department of Justice said: "We just did not understand what was going on in London. We wondered to ourselves whether he was an MI5 informer, or was there some secret the British were not trusting us with? He seemed untouchable."
Finally the Americans submitted an extradition warrant in May 2004, and finally the British authorities decided to put their own house in order. After two decades of allowing Hamza free reign to preach insurrection and legitimise killings in his sermons, they prepared the case against him. This led to Hamza being charged in October on counts of soliciting to murder and inciting racial hatred.
In yesterday's edition of the Times, O'Neill and McGrory document how the French had become so exasperated with British inaction against Hamza that in the 1990s, they even hatched a plan to kidnap Hamza off the street.
The book: The Suicide Factory: Abu Hamza and the Finsbury Park Mosque is available from Times Books First for 7 pounds 19 pence, (Telephone +44 0870 1608080)
Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at June 1, 2006 7:44 PM
Comments
This is my first visit to this site. I like it very much. Thanks for putting it together.
I just wanted to say that in Bat Ye'or's "Eurabia" she gives evidence showing that the British policy regarding islamic terrorists has been for the past 30 years to welcome them and give them refuge. The lame brained reasoning behind this absurd and completely moronic policy is that if they gave the islamic terrorists safe refuge and free reign to commit terrorist acts in foreign countries, then the islamic terrorists would refrain from attacking the UK. Whether this was an actual deal made by British authorities with islamists, or whether they just made this idiotic assumption, I can't say. But nevertheless, I find it incredibly shitty and cowardly for the Brits to just say, "Well, it's ok for the islamists to use our country as a base to launch terrorist attacks from on our neighbors and allies, as long as the islamists don't attack us."
Geez, with allies like this, who need enemies?
Posted by: WhiteDemon}:) ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.westernresistance.com/nav-commenters.gif)
at June 3, 2006 12:55 AM
WhiteDemon,
Please don't judge all of us Brits by the standards of our Civil Servants. They are unelected and operate in secret. If this sort of policy had been made public at the time, there would have been outrage.
As I understand it, the UK government tollerated and gave refuge to Islamic terrorists operating in North Africa. Obviously this is disgraceful. Unfortunately, Britain isn't really a democracy anymore (if it ever was). There is no way that the British people can do anything about this. The Civil Service has 'jobs for life' and can't be held to account by the public. No political parties are calling for the Civil Service to reformed.
There is nothing the average man in the street can do. However, this doesn't mean we don't stand shoulder to shoulder with you guys.
It's only the lame liberal elite that seem to have a problem with the USA. Most of my friends in the country, think you're doing the right thing.
Posted by: grimer at June 3, 2006 11:13 PM
Grimer,
Well, that's good to hear. I was starting to worry.
Truth be told, our government has done some pretty shameful things too. Carter and Clinton did the most shameful things in recent memory.
Carter was, hands down, the absolute WORST president we ever had. Thanks to him we have a bunch of crazed muslims running Iran, and thanks to him terrorism in Israel continues apace and terrorists get to become heads of state instead of going to jail.
Clinton sold us out lock stock and barrel to the Chinese, and everyone else for that matter.
There has to be a way to enact some changes in your government. What do the liberals do to get their way? They scream and cry and whine and protest, threaten and sue... and they get involved in the education process so they can indoctrinate peoples kids with their leftwing propaganda.
Maybe it's time to use their successful tactics, sort of fight fire with fire.
People in the US are apathetic quite a bit of the time, but the illegal immigration issue has us hopping mad. And the politicians are feeling the heat.
Well, anyway, it's good to know that not everyone in the UK hates our guts. Us infidels have to stick together, or we will all lose our heads (quite literally.)
Posted by: WhiteDemon}:) at June 7, 2006 9:55 PM
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