(14 Apr 2014) A jury was chosen Monday for the federal trial of an Egyptian Islamic preacher extradited from Great Britain on charges he conspired to support al-Qaida, setting the stage for the second major terrorism trial in Manhattan in two months.
Eight men and four women will hear evidence in the government’s case against Mustafa Kamel Mustafa after opening statements Thursday.
The judge had Mustafa, also known as Abu Hamza al-Masri stand as she told prospective jurors that his arms have been amputated and asked if anything about his physical appearance would affect their fairness.
Mustafa has one eye and claims to have lost his hands fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan. He had a prosthetic arm in court that allows him to write.
"This is a defendant who I think whose presence in the court room will be known, in part because he is without arms and the jury may pay attention to that," said Karen Greenberg, a legal expert at Fordham Law School.
The trial comes weeks after a jury convicted Osama bin Laden’s son-in-law Sulaiman Abu Ghaith of charges stemming from his role as al-Qaida’s spokesman after the Sept. 11 attacks.
The 55-year-old Mustafa will face a life sentence if he is convicted of conspiring to support al-Qaida by trying in 1999 to set up a terrorist training camp in Bly, Oregon, and for arranging for others to attend an al-Qaida training camp in Afghanistan.
"There are two things going on here. One is, do you think that the jury will respond more to alleged attempts to try to build a training camp in the United States, Or do you take the other perspective which is, is it tied more directly to the Al Qaeda of bin Laden pre-and post-9/11?" Greenberg said.
He is also charged with ensuring there was satellite phone service for hostage-takers in Yemen in 1998 who abducted two American tourists and 14 others. Four hostages were killed.
"Because it involves both global and domestic potential crimes I think there’s a lot of meat here for the jury to digest, but I think will happen rather quickly but with some substance and some depth," Greenberg said.
Mustafa plans to testify at his trial. He said at a pretrial hearing last week: "I think I am innocent. I need to go through it, have a chance to defend myself."
U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest handed prosecutors an early victory Monday, saying she will allow a British man to testify via videotape from London about his role in a shoe-bomb plot after the 2001 attacks.
Mustafa turned London’s Finsbury Park Mosque in the 1990s into a training ground for Islamic extremists, attracting men including Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui and shoe bomber Richard Reid.
Jailed since 2004 in Britain on separate charges of inciting racial hatred and encouraging followers to kill non-Muslims, Mustafa was brought to the United States for trial in fall 2012.
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