Abu Hamza al-Masri

His real name is allegedly Mustafa Kamel Mustafa

Hamza was born in Alexandria, Egypt, in April 1958, the son of a middle class army officer. Mostafa, the 21-year-old student disembarked at Heathrow airport on 13 July 1979.

A friend remembers. “He was cool and, yes, he was a womaniser. He was an Egyptian after all, what do you expect?”

Although his one-month visitor’s visa ruled out working, the young Mostafa quickly found a job. A month after his arrival he applied to extend his stay by another month. Permission was granted without question, on the same “no work” condition that he, like many others, was blissfully ignoring.

One of his several jobs was as night porter in a bed and breakfast hotel not far from Paddington rail station. Here, in the spring of 1980, he met Valerie Traverso, a mother of three young children who was pregnant by Michael Macias, the husband from whom she had recently separated.

He was an illegal immigrant, having failed to renew his visa when it expired the previous September. Valerie’s pregnancy presented him with an opportunity. If he could marry her and persuade her to let him claim that he was the father of her child, his immigration status would be vastly improved. They were married in Westminster Register Office on 16 May 1980.

When the then Mostafa Kamel Mostafa married Valerie Traversa in May 1980, she was still married to Michael Macias, the builder's labourer she wed in 1971.

Significantly, when they married she spelt her name on the register incorrectly, as “Traversa” and not “Traverso”. At the time she and her first husband were separated but not divorced. They did not divorce until July 1982, so her marriage to Abu Hamza was bigamous.

On 26 September 1980, Valerie gave birth to the child with whom she had been pregnant when she met Abu Hamza. Within four days of the baby’s birth, Abu Hamza instructed lawyers to write to the Home Office stating that the young Egyptian immigrant had married an Englishwoman and become a father. He had been living in Britain illegally, but now that he had a wife and child here he wanted to “regularise” his stay. He wanted to remain in the country indefinitely.

Such a claim would have to be supported by documentary evidence, namely marriage and birth certificates. The wedding document the couple already had. On October 22, the birth of Valerie’s daughter was recorded at the office of the Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages in Lambeth. The child’s name was entered as Nahed Donna Mostafa, and the name of her father was registered as Mostafa Kamel Mostafa. He gave his birthplace as Egypt and his occupation as “labourer”.

Abu Hamza signed the register “Mostafa”.

The name of the child’s mother was recorded as Valerie Olga Macias – using the surname of her first husband, to whom she was still legally married. She gave her maiden name as Traverso – spelling it correctly on this occasion. Beside Mostafa’s signature, the name “V. Macias” was signed.

The marriage of Abu Hamza and Valerie Traverso was not legal. It appears that the registration of Valerie’s daughter’s birth was also illegal. Valerie insists to this day that she was pregnant when she met Abu Hamza – she is “150 per cent on that”. If that is true, the birth certificate for the child, which states that he is the father, is a fraudulent document. Now registered as both a husband and a father under British law, Abu Hamza had a strong claim to be allowed to live legally in Britain — a claim based on a double deception.

Abu Hamza’s work as a Soho doorman took him to brothels and bed shows, and onto streets ripe with temptation.

The working girls were often grateful for the protection of their musclebound guardian. Abu Hamza began at least one affair. He has always been coy about this period of his life, bemoaning the men who came “to fantasise” at these places, but adding: “I was a very undisciplined Muslim.”

Back home, busy with nappies and night feeds and waiting for the scrape of his key in the lock each night, Valerie became increasingly suspicious of her husband’s nocturnal activities. Eventually, after a noisy confrontation, he admitted that he had had an affair with a girl he met through the club. The Sun has reported that her former husband’s lover was a prostitute.

This confession was to be one of the key turning points that would put Abu Hamza on to the path of radical Islam. Until that moment he had shown little interest in being a Muslim.

But when Valerie threatened to leave him he must have realised that he could not afford to be deserted. His immigration status was not secure.

She said: “I told him that things had gone too far and I was leaving. He responded by saying that he would change and he would dedicate himself to Islam. He swore that he would never do it again. He was going to be religious, he was going to pray and ask for God’s help.”

In April 1982 the Home Office informed him that he had to extend the validity of his Egyptian passport before it could consider his case further. The passport had expired, rendering him in a stateless limbo.

He responded in June, claiming that the Egyptian embassy in London had refused to renew his passport because he was a young man of army age. He was supposed to return home for national service. Two months later — perhaps because the threat of conscription was considered oppressive — the Home Office decided to give Abu Hamza permission to remain in Britain indefinitely. He was now one short step way from his goal of citizenship.

With his position in Britain secure, Abu Hamza’s marriage to Valerie began to go off the rails. They separated and it was Abu Hamza who petitioned for divorce in June 1984, naming Valerie as respondent and referring to an unknown corespondent.

The divorce was uncontested and the decree absolute was issued at Wandsworth County Court, south London, on 15 August 1984.

A little more than two months later, Abu Hamza married his second wife in an Islamic ceremony in London. Nagat Chaffe, a Moroccan, was also divorced with a young child. As he became a notorious public figure, she remained firmly in the background, the dutiful and veiled wife and mother.

Their first child, Mostafa Kamel Hamza, was born in 1986, and it was his birth that gave his father the nickname, of Abu Hamza, “the father of Hamza”. Abu Hamza and Nagat would go on to have five more children – three sons and two daughters – the youngest born in 1997.

Abu Hamza formally applied for full citizenship in November 1984. It was granted in the spring of 1986, on the basis of five years’ continuous residence. All he had to do in return was pledge allegiance to the Crown.

Hamza was granted British citizenship in 1986 - swearing an oath of allegiance to the Crown. But as the decade wore on, he slowly began to turn towards the most fundamentalist interpretation of the Koran. The reasons behind his radicalisation are unclear, but it has been suggested the racial abuse of his son turned him into a critic of Western society.

Hamza returned to Egypt where he reinvented himself as a Muslim "holy man" or sheikh.

Hamza returned temporarily to Cairo, where his father was an Army officer. There he encountered Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind cleric now in jail in America on terrorist charges. In interviews, Hamza has claimed he subsequently completed a degree in engineering in Brighton. But neither the University of Brighton nor the University of Sussex have any record of him. He also says he was inspired by meeting Abdullah Azzam, the father figure of the jihadi movement, at the hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia in 1987. Between 1989 and 1993 he says he spent much of his time in Afghanistan.

He travelled to Pakistan and Afghanistan, then the centre of a civil war in the wake of the Russian retreat. It is unclear if Hamza actually fought in the jihad, but it is while there that he lost his eye and his hands. Hamza, who had a British passport, was able to return to the UK in the early 1990s. For much of the mid-1990s he is said to have travelled back and forth to Bosnia, where many Arabs joined the Muslim side in the Balkan wars.

It was not until 1996, when he re-emerged as a preacher at Finsbury Park mosque in north London, that he began to gain the notoriety that would see him become one of the most controversial Muslim figures in Britain.

His installation as imam of the Finsbury Park mosque in 1996 was acrimonious. Abdul Kadir Barkatulla, one of the trustees of the mosque, claimed that Hamza and his followers "used intimidation, verbal abuse and even physical use of force" to seize control. Hamza says he was "invited" to preach at the mosque.

From 1997 he began to have a "controlling influence" over the mosque, where he became the imam, and his radical anti-Western sermons attracted extremists.

He also ran a group called the Supporters of Sharia, dedicated to the rule of Islamic law.

In 1999, Hamza was arrested and questioned by Scotland Yard detectives on suspicion of terrorism offences in Yemen following the kidnapping of 16 Western tourists by Islamic militants. In March 1999, anti-terror police arrested Sheikh Hamza at his four-bedroomed council home in Shepherd’s Bush, west London. He was held for several days under the Prevention of Terrorism Act by detectives investigating links to terror groups abroad. He was later released without charge.

Four of the hostages, including three Britons, died when the Yemeni military mounted a rescue bid.

Hamza was held for several days by police before being released without charge.

The cleric always maintained his innocence, but a senior police source said of his alleged involvement in the plot: "We investigated very carefully his suspected involvement in terrorism in the Yemen and while we were not able to bring charges, one has to say there are concerns about his possible involvement in that."

Hamza's son, Mustafa Kamel, was convicted of plotting to sabotage economic and tourist sites in Yemen in August 1999, when aged just 17. He served a three-year prison sentence before returning to Britain in 2002.

It was in the wake of the September 11 2001 atrocities that Abu Hamza al-Masri really burst into the national consciousness for a series of controversial remarks.

He sparked outrage by allegedly saying: "Many people will be happy, jumping up and down at this moment."

As he became increasingly outspoken, several newspapers and MPs began to push for his removal from the country. He was angering many with praise for Osama bin Laden and condemnation of Britain, the US and Israel.

Such was the level of concern that Britain's charity watchdog, the Charity Commission, began an investigation into his role at Finsbury Park.

The commission said it had received, in October 2001, a tape recording of Hamza giving an inflammatory speech after US-led military action began in Afghanistan.

Investigators concluded the sermon was of such an extreme political nature that it conflicted with the mosque's charitable status and started proceedings against the preacher.

In April 2002, he was formally suspended from his position, but nevertheless he continued to give sermons outside and on the first anniversary of the 9/11 attacks he spoke at a controversial conference at the mosque entitled A Towering Day In History - without the authority of the trustees.

On January 20 2003, the mosque was raided by police following the discovery of what was then believed to be ricin at a flat in nearby Wood Green.

The premises were closed and boarded up for several months.

The following month, Hamza was finally dismissed from Finsbury Park permanently by the Charity Commission after it rejected an appeal from his lawyers.

The commission said it had taken the "drastic step" because of the cleric's extreme statements and "the use of the charity's premises for inappropriate non-charitable activities" such as political meetings.

Abu Hamza was the son of a naval officer and a primary school headmistress. He initially studied civil engineering before leaving for England in 1979. One of Abu Hamza's first major engineering contracts took him to Sandhurst, the Royal Military Academy. Technical drawings of the college were still in his home when he was arrested in 2004. It was during this time that the young Mustafa started to show an interest in Islam and politics. The period coincided with the Iranian Revolution, a key moment in the development of the modern Islamist thinking that led ultimately to Osama Bin Laden and others. These thinkers were calling for Islamic states in Islamic lands. They had a military face in the Mujahideen fighters who, backed by the USA, emerged to oppose the Soviet Union's occupation of Afghanistan.

And when some of these veterans came to London for specialist medical treatment on Harley Street, Abu Hamza became one of their translators.

In 1987, these encounters led him to a critical experience: he met Sheikh Abdullah Azzam, the founder of the Afghan Mujahideen, while undertaking the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca.

Shortly afterwards, he packed his belongings into a crate marked for Afghanistan and, according to his evidence at his trial, "went there intending never to return".

Abu Hamza began working in the Jalalabad region, taking part in reconstruction schemes. It was during a related demining project that he lost his hands and one of his eyes.

He returned to the UK in 1993 for treatment. But within two years he had left Britain for a second time to support Bosnian Muslims during the worst of the break-up of the former Yugoslavia.

He was not the only British Muslim to go there - and the experience of those who did has played a key role in the radicalisation of Islamic politics in the UK.

Abu Hamza quickly became a leading figure in the British Islamist scene. He was spending more and more of his time preaching while churning out leaflets calling for jihad against corrupt Middle East regimes.

In 1997, he arrived at Finsbury Park Mosque. During his trial, Abu Hamza told the Old Bailey he was invited to the mosque to resolve tensions between South Asian and North African prayer-goers.

Another theory suggests he gravitated to the mosque thanks to his political contacts in the Algerian community: Abu Hamza had been writing extensively about the Islamist GIA organisation which had been waging a violent campaign against the Algerian government.

According to Abu Hamza himself, MI5 first contacted him in 1997 shortly after extremists massacred 68 tourists at Luxor, Egypt.

These meetings continued for some years, he told the Old Bailey, and included a warning that he was "walking a tightrope".

But it was in 1999 that Abu Hamza and Finsbury Park Mosque came to national prominence.

Scotland Yard questioned the cleric on suspicion of alleged bomb plots in Yemen. While Abu Hamza was released, his son, Mohammed Mustafa Kamel, was jailed in Yemen for three years for involvement in an alleged campaign of violence.

Despite this brush with the law, Abu Hamza was consolidating his hold at the mosque. It had become a hostile environment for anyone who was not a supporter, with his closest confidantes barring access to anyone they did not trust.

The original trustees were still the legal owners, but they had virtually no control over the mosque's day-to-day affairs. Many of the original congregation had turned elsewhere.

An attempt to resolve the stand-off came to nothing as a settlement between the trustees and Abu Hamza quickly unravelled.

Abu Hamza, referred to as "the Sheikh" by his followers, was delivering almost all of the sermons and permitting those sympathetic to his message to sleep in the premises. And on the first anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, he co-organised a conference at the mosque praising the hijackers.

Time runs out

The security services were increasingly gathering intelligence on what was happening inside. Terrorism suspects had passed through the building while its office was being used to disseminate information to a network.

On 20 January 2003, police raided the building as part of a major investigation into an alleged plot to produce ricin poison. They sealed the mosque and handed it back to the trustees.

Abu Hamza himself was not arrested in connection with that probe. But despite being denied a base, he preached outside its gates every Friday.

This bizarre stand-off between Abu Hamza and the authorities continued into 2004. Then, Washington named Abu Hamza as a "terrorist facilitator with a global reach" and he was arrested pending extradition.

Five months later, he was charged with 15 UK offences associated with his sermons and information contained in the Encyclopaedia of Afghan Jihad.

Ms Fleming, a Catholic of Spanish origin, said their marriage began to falter when she worried that Hamza was flirting with women at the West End nightclub where he worked as a bouncer.

Reinvention

In a turning point, he promised to dedicate himself to Islam in a bid to alter his behaviour, prompting them to attend a small mosque in London with their children.

And that year, Hamza asked if he could to take their three-year-old son to Egypt on holiday, saying his father was ill.

Ms Fleming did not see her son again until around 15 years later when she found out through the media that he was on trial in Yemen on charges of plotting a bomb campaign against British and American targets, she told the Times.

Death threats

Ms Fleming saw her ex-husband on television in 1999 after he had reinvented himself as a spiritual leader.

"I could not believe it," she said.

"Where has Mostafa gone? What is this that seems to have replaced him.

"I could not believe what he was saying, all this stuff about Islam, or that he was living in London, just 40 miles away from me."

Now re-married Ms Fleming says she regrets ever meeting her former husband.

Hamza is also sitting on a hefty profit after buying a council house at a knockdown rate 3 years ago. Hamza purchased the lease on a property in Adie Rd, Shepard's Bush, on May 22nd 2000, receiving a 37,500 pounds right to buy discount. The flat is now valued at 240,000 pounds. [

Taxpayers are forking out tens of thousands of pounds to allow Abu Hamza to carry on his hate ranting, it emerged on the 20th October 2003. The hook handed cleric is banned from entering Finsbury Park mosque. Every Friday he still preaches his fundamentalist hatred outside the mosque in the street outside. 12 police officers guard Hamza and prevent violent scenes. Scotland Yard also closes a road to allow him safe passage. Onlookers say he arrives in a Mercedes each week before starting his rants of the evils of the West. More than 1,000 scumbags turn up to listen to this vitriol. He still gets over £200 a week in benefits. The U.S court says he sent large sums of money to the Taliban.

HAMZA COST BRITISH TAXPAYERS OVER 1.5 MILLION POUNDS IN 2004.

Taxpayers are forking out nearly £17,000 a week in legal aid to the Muslim lawyer who championed hate preacher Abu Hamza.

Muddassar Arani's law firm received the huge sum for representing clients including key terrorist suspects. The latest figures reveal that her practice netted £506,466 for the first seven months of the current financial year. She also claimed £1 million for representing Hamza.[2007].

Hamza conned sick grandmother out of £4,000

The Fanatical scum bag preacher Abu Hamza conned a sick grandmother out of £4,000 it has emerged.

For more than three years Linda Jones had to pay £20 per week for furniture she never received after swapping flats with captain hook. Hamza offered to exchange his ground floor flat for Mrs Jones, and said he would leave behind furniture he had bought on credit from a housing trust.

Mrs Jones signed a contract to take on payments for goods. Hamza's sons signed on his behalf. When she moved into the flat it was virtually bare.

Documents seen show that Hamza signed an assured furnished tenancy agreement to move into Vencourt Place in 1998. He agreed to pay the weekly rent of £63.62 and £20.92 for the furniture over 4 years.

Mrs Jones has since moved out of her flat after paying £3,850 for furniture she has never received.

The Sun newspaper called for Hamza to be deported over 12 months ago. Costs include £225,000 on policing with 12 officers assigned to him each week Another £500,000 is being used for fund surveillance operation by M15. He gets benefits of £1,030 per week - the money going to his wife and his seven children, who live rent free in a £350,000 house which would cost £600 per week. Mrs Mostafa alone gets benefits totaling £430 a week or £22,393 a year - equivalent to a £30,000 job after taxes have been paid.

Abu Qatada (Bin Laden's London envoy', is linked to :- His family get £47,000 a year in benefits and live in a council house worth £800,000.

Abu Dahnah - terror suspect being held in Spain, is linked to :-

Jamal Zougram - prime suspect for the Madrid bombings, is linked to:-

David Courtellier - French terror defendant whose brother shared same flat in Londonistan as:-

Zacharias Moussaoui - 9/11 20th Hijacker who worshipped at the Londonistan mosque of :-

Abu Hamza.

The European Court of Human Rights today ordered a halt to the extraditions of Babar Ahmad and radical preacher Abu Hamza, both wanted in the U.S. on terror charges.

The Strasbourg judges said they wanted more time to examine possible breaches if the men face trial on charges which could mean life sentences without parole.

Ahmad, a 36-year old computer expert, has been in a UK prison without trial for nearly six years, refused bail since his arrest in August 2004 on a U.S. extradition warrant.

Radical preacher Hamza is also wanted on terror charges in the U.S.

Both appealed separately to the European Court of Human Rights on the grounds that their treatment and potential punishment could violate Human Rights Convention provisions on the 'prohibition of torture and inhuman or degrading treatment'.

The appeal prompted a stay of extradition proceedings pending today's verdict, which further postponed a final decision

HATE preacher Abu Hamza yesterday launched a new bid to keep his British passport in a legal battle that has so far cost £1.4million.

Hamza is fighting attempts to strip him of his citizenship arguing it is a breach of his human rights.

The hook-handed cleric says that he has been disowned by his native Egypt and that taking away his British passport would leave him “stateless”.

Radical Muslim cleric Abu Hamza has won his appeal against government attempts to strip him of his British passport.

A Special Immigration Appeals Commission (Siac) upheld his appeal in a 12-page ruling.

The preacher had said he would be left "stateless" as he had already lost his Egyptian citizenship.

A Downing Street spokeswoman said David Cameron was "disappointed" but it would not affect ongoing extradition proceedings.

Hamza, 52, was jailed for seven years in February 2006 for inciting murder and race hate.

At a three-day hearing in London last month, Hamza's lawyers argued he had already been stripped of his Egyptian citizenship so could not have his British passport taken too, as that would render him "stateless".

TAXPAYERS are forking out thousands of pounds for renovations to terror preacher Abu Hamza’s £600,000 home.

Town hall chiefs are paying an estimated £10,000 to have the Islamic bigot’s council home underpinned.

Hamza and his brood have already cost the British state more than £3.5million in benefits and prison and legal bills.

The son of hate preacher Abu Hamza has been locked up for attacking police during anti-Israel riots in London.

Yasser Kamel, 20, was caught on camera lobbing sticks at police and wielding a stolen police riot shield during a demonstration against Gaza sanctions outside the Israeli embassy.

Wearing a scarf to disguise his face, the student was at the frontline when hundreds of protesters caused £50,000 of damage to shops and cafes last year.

Then 18, he was seen throwing four missiles at police before changing his clothing to evade detection, Isleworth Crown Court heard.

Yesterday the son of the firebrand cleric was sentenced to 12 months in youth detention after pleading guilty to one count of violent disorder..

Abu Hamza faces deportation over bigamous marriage Times Online ^ | January 30, 2003 | Ian Cobain Posted on 30 January 2003 04:25:45 GMT by lormand

ABU HAMZA AL-MASRI, the controversial imam of Finsbury Park mosque, faces possible deportation after the disclosure yesterday that his British citizenship is based upon a bigamous marriage.

The Egyptian-born cleric was granted the right to remain in the UK after he married Valerie Traverso, a young Englishwoman, in May 1980. However, inquiries by The Times have established that Ms Traverso was already married, and not divorced by her first husband until July 1982. That means the marriage is void, according to family law experts, and Abu Hamza could be stripped of his citizenship.

The Home Office has long been frustrated at its inability to deport the one-eyed, hook-handed imam who has spoken out in support of the September 11 attackers. Last night officials were examining the details of his bigamous marriage.

Police are also expected to investigate, since bigamy is a crime punishable by up to seven years’ imprisonment. Scotland Yard said that officers would “carefully investigate” any evidence that an offence had been committed.

It is unclear whether Abu Hamza, 44, is aware that his marriage was bigamous, however. He was refusing to take telephone calls yesterday, and a reporter calling at his home was turned away by a man who refused to open the door.

Abu Hamza was married under his real name, Mostafa Kamel Mostafa at Westminster Register Office to Ms Traverso, a 25-year-old window dresser from Chelsea, on May 16, 1980.

He has hinted in one interview that he was working as a bouncer at a Soho nightclub at the time. On the marriage certificate, however, he recorded his occupation as a hotel receptionist.

Ms Traverso recorded her surname as Traversa and her marital status as “spinster” — even though she had been married for the previous nine years to a builders’ labourer called Michael Macias, by whom she had two children.

The records at Wandsworth County Court in South London show that that marriage did not end until July 13, 1982, when Mr Macias obtained a divorce.

Under the terms of the Marriage Act 1949, Abu Hamza’s marriage will now be considered void. Rosemary Carter, a family law specialist with London firm Hamlins, said: “It is not a marriage at all. It is a nonsense.”

The cleric has been named in a Yemeni court as the mastermind behind a bomb plot in that country, and a US grand jury is considering whether to charge him over an alleged plan to set up a terrorist training camp in Oregon. v Since falling under his influence six years ago, Finsbury Park mosque in North London has become a focal point of Islamic fundamentalism. It is also suspected of being used as a base for terrorism, and was raided by 150 police last week.

Officers discovered a CS gas canister, an electric stun gun and a replica pistol. They also seized hundreds of documents, including a number of fake French passports and stolen or counterfeit credit cards.

The Charity Commission is now threatening to permanently remove Abu Hamza as an agent of the charity that controls the mosque, on the grounds that he has made a series of statements of “an extreme and political nature”, and is “causing severe damage to its reputation”.

Ms Traverso is now aged 48, married for the fourth time, and lives as Valerie Fleming with her family in Stevenage, Hertfordshire. She is refusing to discuss her marriage to Abu Hamza.

-- 1. He's an Egyptian Sunni Terrorist Known for Preaching Islamic fundamentalism

Despite his radical views he does not always publicly support terrorist actions but, as his states in the video above shot shortly after the 9/11 attacks, supports peace. Unfortunately this belief has led him to developing some more extreme viewpoints as to how to achieve that particular outcome, often times through more controlled violent actions.

2. He's Been Jailed for Years in the U.K. & Will be Extradited to the U.S.

Recently approved by the European Court for Human Rights according to BBC News, Abu Hamza al-Masri (his full name), Babar Ahmad and others is likely to happen within weeks. The decision was made after extensive lobbying by the US and the court deciding "On 10 April 2012 the European Court of Human Rights held, in the case of Babar Ahmad and Others v. the United Kingdom, that there would be no violation of the applicants' rights if extradited to stand trial in the United States." To this decision they appealed, after which the count announced "On 9/10 July 2012, five of the applicants lodged a request for referral of the case to the Grand Chamber. Today the Grand Chamber Panel decided to reject the request. This means that the Chamber judgment of 10 April 2012 is now final."

3. The Queen Spoke Out Against Him

Shared across multiple newspapers and magazines the Queen herself has expressed her dislike over the whole situation, with The Guardian reporting the BBC's security correspondent Frank Gardner said the Queen told him she was "aghast that Abu Hamza could not be arrested during the period when he regularly delivered vehemently anti-British views as imam of Finsbury Park mosque in north London."

4. He's Missing His Right Hand & an Eye

During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan Hamza sufferd an accident while working on a de-mining operation and now uses a prosthetic hook to replace his right hand. This even led The Sun to post the front-page "SLING YOUR HOOK" headline in January of 2003 (prior to his arrest), encouraging him to leave London.

5. He Was Married Twice & Has 8 Kids

He first married to a Roman Catholic convert to Islam, miss Valerie Traverso, in 1980 and had a son with her. Afterwards he divorced her in 1984 when his son was four and re-married to a woman named Nadjet, through which he had 7 children.

6. He Was Once a Bouncer at a Peep Show in Soho, London

He took up the job as a bouncer after acquiring British citizenship from three years of marriage to his first wife, though there is no clear indication how long he remained on the job prior to taking up religious preaching later on in life.

7. His Son & Stepson Were Busted in Yemen for a Bomb Plot

Occurring in 1999, his son Mohammed Mustafa Kamel (17 years old at the time) and stepson Mohsin Ghalain were arrested in Yemen for plotting terrorist bombing and were arrested for three years and seven years, respectively. The bomb plot also included 8 Britons and 2 Algerians.

8. 5 of His Other Sons Have Been Arrested for Combinations of Fraud, Violent Disorderly Conduct & Armed Robbery in the U.K.

Three of his sons were arrested and sentenced in 2009 for two-year fraud involving stolen cars. They were Hamza Kamel (22), Mohamed Mostafa (27) and his stepson Mohssin Ghailam (28). In 2012 his son Yasser Kamel (20) was sentenced to a year for violent anti-Israeli protests in 2009, while a fifth son Imran Mostafa was convicted of armed robbery of a jewelers this past January 2012.

9. He's Been in Jail Facing Multiple Charges Since August 26, 2004

Since his arrest he has been found guilty over the years of six charges of soliciting murder, three charges related to "using threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour with the intention of stirring up racial hatred", one charge of owning recordings related to "stirring up racial hatred" and one charge of possessing a "terrorist encyclopaedia".

10. He's Accused of Attempting to Establish a Terrorist Training Camp Near Bly, Oregon

Hamza began his plot to develop the terrorist cell with James Ujaama back in late 1999 and early 2000.