US News

Shoe bomber doesn’t want to testify in US against hate preacher

A one-time terror-loving shoe bomber said Friday that he has cold feet about coming to the United States to testify as the government’s star witness in the upcoming terror trial of handless hate preacher Abu Hamza al-Masri.

Speaking from 3,200 miles away via closed-circuit TV from the United Kingdom, Saajid Badat told Manhattan federal Judge Katherine Forrest that he’d consult with lawyers but currently has no desire to set foot in America to testify at the April 14 trial because he could be arrested due to a pending 2004 federal indictment in Massachusetts.

“We need you to come to this district to testify, if you will … Would you come to the US later this month to testify?” Forrest asked Badat, a self-proclaimed reformed terrorist who had a last-minute change of heart and pulled out of shoe bomber Richard Reid’s failed bid to blow up an airliner two months after 9/11.

“No, I would like to testify remotely from the UK,” he responded.

Forrest then asked Badat if he’d consider coming to America to testify if the government asked him directly — or if he was told he’d be arrested, but released on bail, and then allowed to return to Great Britain. However, the judge repeatedly said she couldn’t guarantee whether he’d be taken into custody and denied bail if he entered America.

Badat responded by saying he needs to “seek legal advice” and it’s his “understanding that if I travel to the US,” he “would be arrested.” He said he’d get back to the judge about his intentions in writing sometime next week after consulting lawyers.

Abu Hamza al-Masri in a court sketch.Reuters

Lawyers for al-Masri, a one-eyed, hook-handed terror suspect, have argued that Badat shouldn’t be allowed to testify via video from Great Britain, as he did last month during the Manhattan federal trial of Osama bin Laden’s son-in-law, Sulaiman Abu Ghaith. Judge Lewis Kaplan signed off on having Badat testify remotely at Abu Ghaith’s terror trial.

Badat was released early from jail in the UK in 2010 after agreeing to assist US and British authorities in other terror cases. He has also helped put away other terrorists, including Adis Medunjanin, a suspect in a failed 2009 plot to attack New York City’s subways with suicide bombs.

Forrest said she’d make a decision on the government’s bid to have Badat testify via closed-circuit TV after receiving Badat’s letter. If she decides he must testify in person, and he declines, the government loses its key witness.

Badat is expected to tell jurors that he attended terrorist training camps overseas in which al-Masri gave trainees warfare speeches. Al-Masri is charged with setting up a terrorist training camp in Oregon, among other terror-related crimes.

Badat, like Reid, was given shoe bombs by al Qaeda leaders based in Afghanistan to detonate aboard an airliner, but Badat dismantled his shoe bomb and stored it at his parents’ home in England.

Reid is serving life in prison after brave passengers and crew subdued him before he could ignite plastic explosives hidden in his shoes.

Badat kept mum as Reid went along with the plan. He was busted by cops searching his parents’ London home in November 2003, pleaded guilty to conspiring in the shoe-bombing plot and was sentenced to 13 years in prison before being released early for cooperating with authorities.