Radical cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri preached "murder and hatred" against non-Muslims while imam of London's Finsbury Park mosque, a prosecutor said at the start of the firebrand preacher's trial.
Britain's best-known Islamist orator faces a maximum sentence of life in prison if convicted of inciting murder and stirring racial hatred in speeches recorded on nine video and audio tapes made for supporters.
"The prosecution case, in a sentence, is that the defendant, Sheikh Abu Hamza, was preaching murder and hatred in these talks," prosecutor David Perry told a jury at London's Central Criminal Court on Wednesday.
The Egyptian-born cleric -- who says he lost his eye and hands while fighting Soviet troops in Afghanistan -- was head preacher at the Finsbury mosque from the late 1990s until 2003, when he was ousted by the community's leaders.
The north London center has been linked to several terrorist suspects, including alleged Sept. 11 plotter Zacarias Moussaoui and "shoe bomber'' Richard Reid.
In speeches delivered at the mosque and elsewhere, the cleric referred to Jews as "blasphemous, traitors and dirty" and said their behavior was "why Hitler was sent into the world," Perry said.
Al-Masri, 47, has pleaded innocent to the charges.
In a statement issued through his lawyer after his 2004 arrest, al-Masri said his religious speeches "have been taken out of context."
‘HYANGDO’: A South Korean lawmaker said there was no credible evidence to support rumors that Kim Jong-un has a son with a disability or who is studying abroad South Korea’s spy agency yesterday said that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s daughter, Kim Ju-ae, who last week accompanied him on a high-profile visit to Beijing, is understood to be his recognized successor. The teenager drew global attention when she made her first official overseas trip with her father, as he met with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Analysts have long seen her as Kim’s likely successor, although some have suggested she has an older brother who is being secretly groomed as the next leader. The South Korean National Intelligence Service (NIS) “assesses that she [Kim Ju-ae]
In the week before his fatal shooting, right-wing US political activist Charlie Kirk cheered the boom of conservative young men in South Korea and warned about a “globalist menace” in Tokyo on his first speaking tour of Asia. Kirk, 31, who helped amplify US President Donald Trump’s agenda to young voters with often inflammatory rhetoric focused on issues such as gender and immigration, was shot in the neck on Wednesday at a speaking event at a Utah university. In Seoul on Friday last week, he spoke about how he “brought Trump to victory,” while addressing Build Up Korea 2025, a conservative conference
DEADLOCK: Putin has vowed to continue fighting unless Ukraine cedes more land, while talks have been paused with no immediate results expected, the Kremlin said Russia on Friday said that peace talks with Kyiv were on “pause” as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy warned that Russian President Vladimir Putin still wanted to capture the whole of Ukraine. Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump said that he was running out of patience with Putin, and the NATO alliance said it would bolster its eastern front after Russian drones were shot down in Polish airspace this week. The latest blow to faltering diplomacy came as Russia’s army staged major military drills with its key ally Belarus. Despite Trump forcing the warring sides to hold direct talks and hosting Putin in Alaska, there
North Korea has executed people for watching or distributing foreign television shows, including popular South Korean dramas, as part of an intensifying crackdown on personal freedoms, a UN human rights report said on Friday. Surveillance has grown more pervasive since 2014 with the help of new technologies, while punishments have become harsher — including the introduction of the death penalty for offences such as sharing foreign TV dramas, the report said. The curbs make North Korea the most restrictive country in the world, said the 14-page UN report, which was based on interviews with more than 300 witnesses and victims who had
RSS