The feds haven’t offered this one-eyed, hook-handed terror suspect any plea deals, but Abu Hamza al-Masri vows he’s “innocent” — and would never have accepted one anyway.
With jury selection for the handless hate preacher’s Manhattan federal court trial set to begin Monday, Judge Katherine Forrest reminded al-Masri during a conference Wednesday that he still has a right to plead guilty without a deal on the table from the government and hope for a lesser sentence.
She then asked al-Masri if he still plans to fight charges of setting up a terrorist training camp in Oregon, among other terror-related crimes.
“Yes, your honor, I think I am innocent,” said al-Masri while standing. “I need to go through with it … and defend myself.”
Al-Masri has become a regular pen pal to Forrest over the past few months, using a special prosthesis to write two letters from his Metropolitan Correctional Center cell. In both letters, he noted that he plans to take the stand and testify in his own defense.
During Wednesday’s conference, Forrest also said that lawyers for former shoe-bombing plotter Saajid Badat have notified her by mail that the government’s star witness still has no desire to set foot in America to testify against al-Masri.
Badat has cold feet and wants to testify from 3,200 miles away via closed-circuit TV from the United Kingdom because he could be arrested if he comes to America due to a pending 2004 federal indictment in Massachusetts.
Forrest said she’d soon rule on whether she’ll allow Badat to testify remotely.
Lawyers for al-Masri 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.
Badat is 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.