Terrorist Mustafa Arrested
Fox — U.S. Indicts Radical Muslim Cleric
Radical Muslim cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri (search) has been arrested and charged by the United States in an 11-count indictment in Manhattan federal court, Attorney General John Ashcroft announced on Thursday.
Al-Masri, also known as Mustafa Kamel Mustafa, was arrested Thursday morning in Great Britain on an extradition warrant issued by the U.S. government. He is the former imam at the Finsbury Park mosque (search) in London.
Al-Masri has ties to James Ujaama (search), who was sentenced to two years in prison in February after he pleaded guilty last year to aiding the Taliban and helping to set up a training camp in the same town where al-Masri attempted to establish such a camp.
The indictment was returned by a federal grand jury on April 19, 2004, and was unsealed Thursday. The indictment charges him with hostage-taking and conspiracy to take hostages in connection with an attack in Yemen in December 1998 that resulted in the deaths of four hostages. The maximum sentence for the abduction is the death penalty.
I vote for that.
Why are so many Muslim clerics in the news blind or semi-blind? Is it a coincidence? Seriously. Does anybody know?
I would guess two things contribute:
1. Blindness is much more common in that part of the world.
2. Being a cleric is the sort of job that one can do reasonably well if blind, unlike most other job/livelihood options available.
We are probably just not hearing about the non-radical blind clerics.
Well, Mustafa lost his eye fighting with the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan. He’s not completely blind. He also has a hook in place of one of his hands. I think the Hamas guy was blind from birth or childhood.
A blind cleric would have to memorize the Qu’ran since there’s not really a Braille for Arabic. Memorization and recitation of the Qu’ran is an essential skill for any Muslim cleric, and this puts sighted and blind on equal footing.
Remember, back before the printing press there were few books (and all hand-copied); memorization was an essential skill for religion and government.
interesting to see if he is extradited.
After all under british law
“No State Party shall expel, return (“refouler”) or extradite a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.”
After the last few weeks anyone want to take a bet on what his lawyers argue in the extradition hearing?
BBC article’s bit about the death penalty:
I don’t care if we kill him. I’m willing to bet that fanatic has lots of interesting info. And we’ve done a good thing for the Brits be enabling them to get him off the street. Even if we argue for ages about extraditing him, they can at least keep him ‘in custody’.
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