A handless, one-eyed Islamic hate preacher faces life in prison, convicted by a Manhattan jury Monday of aiding terrorism while he led a London mosque attended by failed “shoe bomber” Richard Reid and Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui.
Abu Hamza al-Masri, who was extradited from England in 2012, sat stone-faced and silent as the verdict was announced in federal court downtown.
Jurors deliberated less than two days before finding him guilty on all 11 counts. Sentencing was set for Sept. 9.
Al-Masri’s crimes include helping terrorists communicate via satellite phone during a deadly kidnapping in Yemen, sending cronies to set up an al Qaeda training camp in Bly, Ore., and arranging for least one man to train as a terrorist in Afghanistan.
Jury foreman Howard Bailynson said outside court: “I feel he got a fair trial. There is no doubt about that.”
Asked if he thought al-Masri lied on the stand during four days of testimony, Bailynson said, “I think there were clearly elements he embellished on.”
“As the prosecutors said, he’s a skilled orator so that played into his ability to provide testimony,” said Bailynson, 44, a Xerox exec from Westchester.
“Preaching is in his core. That’s who he is. It gave him time to answer questions.”
Bailynson also called al-Masri’s view of the Sept. 11 terror attacks “clearly disturbing.”
In a recording played for the jury, al-Masri told a Canadian TV interviewer: “Everybody was happy when the planes hit the World Trade Center.”
“Anybody who tell [sic] you he was not happy, they are hypocrites for the Muslim nation,” he added.
Al-Masri initially gained infamy for wearing hooks in place of his missing hands while he delivered fiery sermons against America and Israel at London’s Finsbury Park Mosque.
Although he was allowed to keep his hooks while imprisoned in Britain for inciting murder and racial hatred, American authorities initially took them away as a security risk. During the trial, he occasionally wore a prosthetic with two hook-shaped clamps, which he used to take notes and even eat doughnuts.
Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bharara hailed the verdict, which came just weeks after another jury convicted Osama bin Laden’s son-in-law on terror charges tied to anti-American statements he made as an al Qaeda spokesman after Sept. 11.
“Abu Hamza attempted to portray himself as a preacher of faith, but he was instead a trainer of terrorists,” Bharara said in front of the courthouse. “That has now been proven in an American court, by a unanimous jury, beyond any reasonable doubt.”
Bharara also noted last week’s dedication of the National Sept. 11 Museum underneath Ground Zero, which he said honored “the lives of 3,000 people who died at the hands of terrorists.”
“But there’s another way to honor the victims of terrorism, and that’s bringing to justice those who perpetrate terror,” Bharara said.
The defense vowed to appeal, with lawyer Jeremy Schneider saying that testimony about bin Laden, al Qaeda, Sept. 11 and the attack on the USS Cole “played much more of a role than we believed they should have.”
Schneider described al-Masri as “stoic,” adding: “I think he had no illusions about what was going to happen to him.”
Another defense lawyer, Josh Dratel, said the quick verdict “demonstrates what we were warned about from the start: that the inflammatory nature of his comments would decide the case.”
Evidence against al-Masri included video and audio recordings of him shouting at his followers and saying that non-Muslims can be treated like animals.
A victim who was shot in the leg during the kidnapping in Yemen also limped into court to describe her ordeal.
During his testimony, al-Masri denied that he engaged in terrorism or assisted al Qaeda.
He also said he lost his hands, part of his forearms and an eye a 1993 accident while he was working as civil engineer for the Pakistani military.
Published reports had previously said the injuries came while al-Masri fought the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.