U.S. wants imam

last updated 8 January 2015

London

The U.S. this week filed for the extradition of the radical Muslim cleric and suspected terrorist Abu Hamza al-Masri. Al-Masri, who lost an eye and a hand fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan, is accused of trying to set up a terror training camp in Oregon, of funding other training camps, and of masterminding a hostage taking in Yemen. The Egyptian-born cleric was head of Britain’s notorious Finsbury Park mosque, where shoe bomber Richard Reid and Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called 20th hijacker, listened to his exhortations to kill infidels. “The evidence gathered by the FBI,” U.S. government lawyer James Lewis told a British court, “shows that Abu Hamza was a member of a conspiracy to wage global jihad.” Al-Masri’s defense lawyers are fighting his extradition, arguing that he would not get a fair trial in the U.S. and that some of the evidence against him may have been obtained from tortured witnesses.