Abu Hamza al-Masri

Mustafa Kamel Mustafa (مصطفى كامل مصطفى; born 15 April 1958), also known as Abu Hamza al-Masri (أبو حمزة المصري, – literally, father of Hamza, the Egyptian), or simply Abu Hamza, is an Egyptian cleric who was the imam of Finsbury Park Mosque in London, England, where he preached Islamic fundamentalist views.

The UK tabloid press nicknamed him "Captain Hook" in allusion to the fictional pirate Captain Hook, due to his prosthetic hook devices.

Hamza was born Mustafa Kamel Mustafa, in Alexandria, Egypt, in 1958, the son of a middle-class army officer.

In 1979, he entered Britain on a student visa.

His initial reaction to life in Britain was to describe it as "a paradise, where you could do anything you wanted."

He studied civil engineering at Brighton Polytechnic.

Hamza gained employment as a bouncer in the strip bars of Soho under his original name from 1980 until 1983, when club baron Jean Agius was arrested and charged for conspiring to be a pimp.

Agius alleges that Hamza may have also co-owned a club during this time.

On 16 May 1980, Hamza married British citizen Valerie Fleming, a Roman Catholic convert to Islam, and soon after they had a son, Mohammed Mustafa Kamel born in October 1981.

In 1984, their relationship came under increasing strain and later in that year Hamza took three-year-old Mohammed with him to Egypt, effectively breaking contact with Valerie.

Eventually they divorced and he married Najat Mustafa, with whom he has seven children: five sons followed by two daughters.

In the early 1990s, Hamza lived in Bosnia under another name, and fought alongside Bosniaks against Serbs and Croats during the Bosnian War.

Hamza, who has one eye and no hands, once claimed he lost them fighting Soviet forces in Afghanistan.

CNN reported they were "injuries he says he sustained while tackling a landmine in Afghanistan."

Among several accounts that take issue with Hamza's story, BBC security correspondent Gordon Corera's introduction to Omar Nasiri's memoir Inside the Jihad: My Life with Al Qaeda says Hamza "boosted his credibility" with rumours he sustained the injuries fighting jihad; also that Nasiri knew they resulted from "an accident during experiments in a training camp", and Hamza asked Nasiri "to keep this secret in order to avoid undermining his reputation."

This version of events is corroborated by Aimen Dean, a senior figure in al-Qaeda's chemical weapons program turned double agent for MI6.

Both Dean and Hamza were trained by Abu Khabab, al-Qaeda's top bomb maker.

Dean states that Hamza sustained his injuries at a training camp near Lahore where, having prepared a batch of nitroglycerin, Hamza ignored his tutor's instructions to wait for the mixture to cool before inserting the detonator.

During his trial in the United States, Hamza stated that his injuries occurred whilst working with explosives with the Pakistani military in Lahore.

Hamza was the imam of Finsbury Park Mosque from 1997, and a leader of the Supporters of Sharia, a group that believed in a strict interpretation of Islamic law.

Prior to his adoption of Islamism in Malta, 1999, Hamza was known as a "gentle giant" and a "womaniser".

In 1999, Hamza's son Mohammed, then 17 years old, was arrested in Yemen with Hamza's stepson Mohssin Ghalain and eight other men.

All were tried and convicted of planning a terrorist bombing campaign that the prosecution alleged Hamza had sent the men to carry out.

Mohammed and Mohssin received prison sentences of three and seven years, respectively.

On 14 September 1999, he sent an article to Al-Hayat, one of the largest pan-Arab newspapers, supporting the Russian apartment bombings, claiming that, while "in a war, no one targets women and children in a war", these attacks were necessary as "a Muslim revenge for the Russian criminal policies in Chechnya".

In 2003, he addressed a rally in central London called by the Islamic al-Muhajiroun, where members spoke of their support for Islamist goals such as the creation of a new Islamic caliphate and replacing the Western-backed Middle Eastern regimes.

On 4 February 2003 (after being suspended since April 2002), Hamza was dismissed from his position at the Finsbury Park Mosque by the Charity Commission, the government department that regulates charities in England and Wales.

In 2004, Hamza was arrested by British police after the United States requested he be extradited to face charges.

He was later charged by British authorities with sixteen offences for inciting violence and racial hatred.

After his exclusion from the mosque, he preached outside the gates until May 2004, when he was arrested at the start of US extradition proceedings against him (see below).

Hamza publicly expressed support for Islamist goals such as creating a caliphate, and for Osama bin Laden.

He wrote a paper entitled El Ansar (The Victor) in which he expressed support for the actions of the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) in Algeria, but he later rejected them when they started killing civilians.

In one sermon relating to the necessity of Jihad, he said: "Allah likes those who believe in Him who kill those who do not believe in Him. Allah likes that. So if you Muslims don't like that because you hate the blood, there is something wrong with you."

In 2006, a British court found him guilty of inciting violence, and sentenced him to seven years' imprisonment.

Hamza's stepdaughter, Donna Traverso, told The Times in 2006 that she was convinced Hamza had duped her mother, Valerie, into marrying him in order to gain the right to stay in the UK (see "Arrests, charges and imprisonment" below).

On 5 October 2012, after an eight-year legal battle, he was extradited from the UK to the United States to face terrorism charges and on 14 April 2014 his trial began in New York.

Hamza's Moroccan daughter-in-law was jailed for attempting to smuggle a mobile phone sim card when visiting him in Belmarsh prison in 2012.

She is now facing deportation but because she is the sole carer of her son, a British national, the European Court of Justice's advocate general has ruled she cannot automatically be deported despite her criminality unless she is deemed to pose a 'serious' threat to society.

On 19 May 2014, Hamza was found guilty of eleven terrorism charges by a jury in Manhattan.

On 9 January 2015, he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.