Hamza: I kept plans of Sandhurst
Alleged race hate cleric Abu Hamza today revealed he kept plans of the royal military academy Sandhurst which he admitted would be “very crucial to any terrorist”.
Hamza’s trial at the Old Bailey was told he was employed at Sandhurst immediately after gaining an engineering degree in 1989, and took on responsibility for maintaining the fence and a variety of buildings on the perimeter of the site.
Giving evidence at the start of his defence case, Hamza said he had kept drawings of the academy after leaving the job two years later.
“It would be very crucial to any terrorist,” he told jurors.
The cleric claimed police had not confiscated the diagrams despite finding them in his house during raids in 1999 and 2004.
He also maintained that police and MI5 officers had played down the danger he posed during a series of meetings.
One occasion he allegedly asked Special Branch officers whether his preaching was breaking the law.
“They said ‘You have freedom of speech. We don’t have to worry as long as we don’t see blood on the streets.”
MI5 operatives, meanwhile, blamed the government for the number of Muslim groups they were having to track, according to Hamza.
“They told me they are watching so many groups there was no question I was being singled out.
“It was Londonistan, not because of me but because of government policy.”
However, the court heard that MI5 agents had also warned that his sermons were taking him close to the edge.
“They said, ’We think you are walking on a tightrope’.”
“They said: ’You say things sometimes we don’t like.”’
Moments after he went into the witness box Hamza dramatically denied encouraging his followers to murder.
Dressed in a blue tunic shirt and trousers and with his arms tucked into pockets, he had been escorted by two security guards.
Another court officer held a card for the handless preacher to read so he could swear in before giving his testimony.
When Hamza was asked by his counsel, Edward Fitzgerald QC, whether he had incited his listeners to murder in a series of sermons between 1997 and 2000 he replied “No” in a loud voice, and added: “Racism is one of the greatest sins.”
The cleric was questioned in detail by Mr Fitzgerald on his attitude to people from different racial and religious backgrounds.
He said: “As individuals I’ve never been abusive to any person, unless he has been abusive first and unjustified.”
Hamza told the court he communicated with members of the Jewish community in his local area, and he had once signed a petition supporting a synagogue that had been attacked.
“Whoever comes towards me I take them with open arms,” he said.
The defendant said he was “against homosexuality,” but he would not be personally abusive to a gay person.
“If (a gay man) comes to me to say hello I don’t push him away, I don’t harangue him.”
He also told the jury that there were rules governing when Muslims should fight.
“We must fight only in the cause of God. We mustn’t fight for the sake of fighting, we don’t kill women or children, and we only fight for the sake of God.”
Hamza, from west London, faces nine charges under the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 alleging that he solicited others at public meetings to murder Jews and other non-Muslims.
He also faces four charges under the Public Order Act 1986 of “using threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour with the intention of stirring up racial hatred”.
A further charge alleges Hamza was in possession of video and audio recordings, which he intended to distribute to stir up racial hatred.
The final charge, under section 58 of the Terrorism Act, accuses him of possession of a document, the Encyclopaedia of the Afghani Jihad, which contained information “of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism”.
The cleric denies all the charges.
The trial was adjourned until tomorrow.
