Maybe the feds should have changed the channel.
Speaking as a government witness from London via closed-circuit TV in the terror trial of handless accused terror teacher Abu Hamza al-Masri, former shoe-bombing plotter Saajid Badat told a Manhattan federal jury Tuesday that he met Osama bin Laden 20 to 50 times — and the since-killed al Qaeda leader never mentioned the defendant or any of his lieutenants.
Badat previously testified that he never met al-Masri but did watch him give two “shouty” sermons at a London mosque. On Wednesday, he was asked while being cross examined by al-Masri’s lawyer Jeremy Schneider if the preacher spoke about “jihad” or anything “political.”
Badat repeatedly answered, “No,” saying al-Masri’s sermons were strictly religious. He also reiterated that he never spoke to the one-eyed, hook-handed hate preacher in person or by phone or had any contact with him via email or other correspondence.
Although Badat’s latest testimony seemed to distance al-Masri from bin Laden and al Qaeda, prosecutors are hoping his previous remarks on Tuesday will help convince jurors that the defendant was a terrorist leader with global reach who deployed young lieutenants worldwide to engage in terror training.
For instance, Badat testified that he encountered Feroz Abbasi – who the feds allege was an al-Masri lieutenant – while both attended Afghanistan training camps in early 2001. Badat revealed that Abbasi while there met with two senior al Qaeda leaders and said he’d be willing carry out attacks against American and Jewish targets.
Al-Masri, 56, is accused of setting up a terrorist training camp in Bly, Oregon, conspiring in a 1998 kidnapping in Yemen that resulted in the deaths of four tourists and committing other terror crimes. He faces life in prison if convicted.
Badat is a self-proclaimed reformed terrorist who had a last-minute change of heart two months after 9/11 and pulled out of trying to blow up airplanes with failed shoe bomber Richard Reid.