An NYPD cop has accomplished what federal investigators and Britain’s top terror-busters have failed to do for years – crack the case against a fanatical cleric implicated in a deadly Yemeni hostage-taking and a scheme to open a jihad school in Oregon.
It took veteran Detective George Corey – and his precision grilling of an unidentified jihadi already in custody – to build enough evidence for British authorities to arrest London radical and accused al Qaeda recruiter Abu Hamza al-Masri, considered a top prize among terror suspects.
Al-Masri – a one-eyed, hook-handed radical who has praised the 9/11 attacks and whose followers included suspected 20th highjacker Zacarias Moussaoui and shoe bomber Richard Reid – will be held in Britain until the United States can extradite him on an 11-count indictment.
Brass from the FBI-NYPD joint terrorism task force said nobody could have done the critical interrogation job more effectively than a New York City cop – and Corey ranks with the best.
“Nobody is better than New York City cops at this kind of thing – at interviewing a difficult suspect, getting him to ‘flip’ and give information,” said task-force Chief James Waters.
“It comes from experience.”
Officials declined to identify the suspect who crumbled under questioning by Corey, a 40-year-old Queens native who began walking a beat in The Bronx two decades ago and joined the task force after 9/11.
But it may be James Ujaama, 36 – a cooperating, admitted conspirator in a failed 1999 plot to set up a global terrorism training camp in Bly, Ore. Ujaama was close to al-Masri, and has been described as crucial to building a U.S. criminal case against the cleric. Al-Masri had been an unnamed, uncharged co-conspirator in the Oregon plot.
The decorated Corey was in London yesterday when his British colleagues – who had been trying to build a case against al-Masri for years – nabbed the cleric at his home.
The indictment, unsealed in New York yesterday by Attorney General John Ashcroft, accused al-Masri of trying to establish the Oregon camp – which probers called a training ground for Muslim advocates of “violent jihad.”
The camp would have been used to store ammo and weapons and to develop poisonous material for use against the public, the feds have charged.
Al-Masri is also charged with raising money for both al Qaeda and the Taliban, and with taking hostages in a 1998 terrorist raid in Yemen that led to the deaths of four tourists.
“Think of him as a free-lance consultant to terrorist groups worldwide,” said NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly at a press conference in New York held after al-Masri – whose real name is Mustafa Kamel Mustafa – was taken into custody.
Ashcroft said the United States would immediately seek extradition of the Egyptian-born, 47-year-old preacher of hate.
Al-Masri – who lost an eye and two hands to a land mine while fighting the Soviet occupation in Afghanistan in the 1980s – is notorious in London for his vile rants against the British, Americans and Jews. He has praised both Osama bin Laden and the Sept. 11 attacks.
Extradition from England is prohibited for anyone facing the death penalty – the maximum sentence al-Masri faces for the 1998 hostage-taking.
But British Home Secretary David Blunkett said yesterday that an understanding was reached last year in al-Masri’s case. He said it provides that Americans “are entitled to find him guilty, they are entitled to kill in the sentence, but they will not carry out an execution.”
According to the indictment, al-Masri served as an intermediary for the terrorists who took 16 tourists, including two Americans, hostage in Yemen in December 1998.
He is accused of providing them with a satellite phone before the attack and keeping in touch with their leader before and after it ended violently with the terrorists using their innocent captives as human shields.
He faces up to 100 years in prison on the other charges in the indictment.
Police searched al-Masri’s home after his arrest. It was not known what, if anything, was found.
Later, during a brief hearing held in high-security Belmarsh prison, al-Masri shrugged and laughed when he was asked if he would agree to being extradited to the United States.
“I don’t really think I want to, no,” he answered.
A magistrate ordered him held without bail at the prison for an extradition hearing on July 23.
British officials noted that while other terror suspects have successfully fought extradition, a new treaty that took effect Jan. 1 doesn’t require the United States to provide evidence of al-Masri’s crimes.
The Brits will undoubtedly be glad to be rid of the monstrous imam.
He has been fomenting hate for years, calling the invasion against Iraq “a war against Islam,” labeling the 9/11 attacks a Jewish plot, and saying the death of the space shuttle Columbia astronauts was “punishment from Allah.”
He has also told British Muslims that murder, bank robbery and looting are acceptable tactics against the enemies of Islam.
Al-Masri has denied any involvement in violence, claiming he is simply a spokesman for political causes.
Among those who worshipped at al-Masri’s Finsbury Park Mosque – shuttered in 2003 by British authorities as a grooming ground for al Qaeda – was Moussaoui, who is awaiting trial in the United States as a 9/11 conspirator.
Another of his followers was Reid, who is serving a life term for trying to blow up a Paris-to-Miami flight with explosives hidden in his shoe.
Additional reporting by Philip Messing