(8 May 2014) An Egyptian cleric known for incendiary rhetoric at a London mosque was said on Thursday to have appeared "calm, and scholarly" during defence questioning at his trial in Manhattan.
Karen Greenberg, the Director of the Centre on National Security at Fordham Law School, said Abu Hamza al-Masri, also known as Mustafa Kamel Mustafa, countered three weeks of government evidence with answers to rapid-fire questions posed by defence lawyer Joshua Dratel.
Greenberg, who has been in the courtroom since the start of the trial, says Mustafa "has backed away from, whenever he has been given the chance, the idea of violence and talked a great deal about religion in a more helpful sense."
"No," Mustafa calmly replied repeatedly as Dratel asked him if he participated in a December 1998 kidnapping in Yemen, tried to organise a jihad training camp in Oregon, aided al-Qaida or sent anyone to Afghanistan to engage in jihad training.
An indictment charges him with conspiring to do all those things.
If convicted, he could face life in prison, a prospect he said he did not fear.
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