Handless hate preacher Abu Hamza al-Masri showed off his poison pen Monday for a newly selected jury who’ll decide his terror trial.
The one-eyed, hook-handed terror suspect accused of conspiring to support al Qaeda showed up in Manhattan federal court with a special writing prosthesis. The predominantly beige-colored device had two metallic, hook-shaped clamps on its lower tip, which he artfully used to hold a pen to take notes during the nearly four-hour jury selection process.
Al-Masri, however, was not wearing the prosthesis when Judge Katherine Forrest asked him to stand. She wanted prospective jurors to see his “physical disability,” which includes badly inflamed stumps. The terror suspect claims he lost one eye and his hands while fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan.
“Is there anything about his appearance or disability that would prevent you from being fair?” Judge Katherine Forrest asked about 75 prospective jurors in the courtroom.
None said they had a problem with his appearance.
More than 200 prospective jurors filled out questionnaires for the trial. Ultimately, a 12-person jury consisting of eight men and four women were chosen. Three of the four alternates picked were women.
Opening statements begin on Thursday.
Al-Masri, 55, is accused of conspiring in a 1998 kidnapping in Yemen that resulted in the deaths of four tourists, attempting to set a jihadist training camp in Oregon and committing other terror crimes. He faces life in prison if convicted.
The terror suspect has become a regular pen pal to Forrest over the past few months, using his 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 jury selection, Al-Masri slipped the prosthesis on whenever he wanted to take notes. Afterwards, as he was taken back into custody, a federal marshal took the prosthesis from him, placed it in a clear plastic bag and carried it away.
Forrest on Monday also told prosecutors and al-Masri’s lawyers that she would allow the government’s star witness, shoe-bombing plotter Saajid Badat, to testify during the trial via closed-circuit TV from the United Kingdom.
Badat does not want to step foot in America because the feds said they’d have to arrest him due to a pending 2004 federal indictment in Massachusetts.
Lawyers for al-Masri had 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.