US News

Jury hears hook-handed suspect praise 9/11 attacks, bin Laden

Jurors at the terror trial of one-eyed, hook-handed terror suspect Abu Hamza al-Masri got their first shot at listening to his own damning words Monday — including his high praise for the 9/11 terror attacks and Osama bin Laden.

Among key video and audio evidence played by prosecutors in the Manhattan federal-court trial was a post-9/11 Canadian TV interview.

During the chat, the hate preacher said he “approves of using airplanes to kill” while referring to the attacks on the World Trade Center and then openly spoke in support of al Qaeda’s 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen that killed 17 American sailors.

“Everybody was happy when the planes hit the World Trade Center,” he says. “Anybody who tell [sic] you he was not happy, they are hypocrites for the Muslim Nation.”

Other evidence played for jurors included a propaganda video, titled “The Importance of Training,” in which al-Masri tells parents to “send their children to be trained in jihad so they can be sent to the front lines.”

The tapes were played while George Corey, a federal investigator, was on the witness stand.

Corey testified that he didn’t have any information linking al-Masri to helping plan terror attacks but added that the hate preacher did voice his support of such attacks in the various broadcast interviews played for jurors.

Earlier Monday, David Smith, a US resident and former Masri devotee who began following the crippled cleric 15 years ago in London, testified that he thought al-Masri was a “nice guy” when they first met.

But he added that he has since come to find the preacher’s views “unacceptable.”

Prosecutors tried to get Smith, a paid government informant, to clarify his remarks Friday when he said a jihadist training camp that al-Masri is accused of setting up in Oregon was like the “Cub Scouts.”

“Ever remember being taught how to slit a man’s throat in the Cub Scouts?” Assistant US Attorney John Cronan asked.

“It was not in the manual, no,” Smith replied.

Al-Masri, 56, 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.