Sheikh can’t preach at London mosque Al-Masri gagged [Archives:2003/06/Front Page]

LONDON – Britain’s government most outspoken Muslim cleric, Abu Hamza al-Masri – who is wanted in Yemen on terrorism charges – has been removed from his post as imam at the Finsbury Park mosque.
British authorities believe he has made the mosque an active recruitment center for violent Islamic radicals.
The Charity Commission’s decision to ban al-Masri from preaching at the north London mosque comes a day after he declared that the crew of the Columbia space shuttle – five Americans, an Indian-born Hindu and an Israeli – represented a “trinity of evil” punished with death by Allah.
Al-Masri said British Muslims would take it as a “sign from God” that the first Israeli astronaut was killed by a disaster over a town in Texas named Palestine. Days after the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Masri praised the 19 suicide hijackers as martyrs, saying, “Many people will be happy, jumping up and down at this moment.”
Al-Masri, a 44-year-old Egyptian-born militant Muslim, “had used his position within the charity to make inappropriate political statements,” the Charity Commission announced. “The action we have taken today enables the trustees of the North London Central Mosque to govern the charity so that it can do the important work for which it was originally established,” John Stoker, the chief charity commissioner, said in a statement.
Al-Masri wears a hook where a hand was blown off by a land mine in Afghanistan 20 years ago. At the mosque, he has praised Osama bin Laden and encouraged young Muslims in London to join a “holy war” against the West, calling Prime Minister Tony Blair a “legitimate target” in that war. The commission opened its inquiry of Mr. Masri after his “extreme comments” about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, a spokesperson said.
Last April the Charity Commission suspended al-Masri from his leadership of the mosque. Sush Aman, a spokeswoman for the commission, said al-Masri’s remarks about last week’s shuttle disaster had “absolutely no connection at all” to the commission’s decision. “It is completely and utterly coincidental,” Ms. Aman said.
Al-Masri’s lawyers have three months to file an appeal with the High Court. If al-Masri continues to preach at the mosque, he can be charged with criminal contempt of court, Aman said.
However, al-Masri is free to pray outside the mosque, which remains closed after 150 policemen in riot gear used battering rams and ladders in a surprise 2 a.m. raid on Jan. 20. Seven people were arrested at the mosque on charges related to the discovery of the deadly poison ricing in a London apartment on Jan. 5.
Every Friday since the police raid, al-Masri has led prayers and continued to preach in the street outside the mosque. al-Masri challenged the Charity Commission’s authority to remove him from the mosque’s leadership position.
“The reason for banning me is for making political comments against America and Israel,” al-Masri said in a telephone interview with Reuters. “The Charity Commission has actually collaborated with the police to close the mosque, and actually to hijack the whole mosque.”
Al-Masri’s remarks about the victims of the space shuttle disaster touched off a powerful wave of outrage and fury all over Britain.
Al-Masri declared: `The Muslim people see these pilots as criminals. By going into space, they would have sharpened the accuracy of their bombs through satellites.” He also said, “The fact that the motor of the craft fell on Palestine – all these are messages from God.”
Oliver Letwin, the shadow home secretary, said he was appalled at al-Masri’s remarks, calling them “monstrous, appalling, despicable and outrageous.”Among the worshipers at the Finsbury Park mosque who have heard al- Masri’s preachings: Richard C. Reid, the Briton who was sentenced in the United States last week to 110 years in prison for trying to blow up a Miami-bound jet from Paris in December 2001 with explosives hidden in his shoes, and Zacarias Moussaoui, the French citizen of Moroccan descent who faces conspiracy charges in Alexandria, Va., in connection with the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

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