Cleric told followers to kill, jurors told

LONDON — A prosecutor Wednesday accused Egyptian-born Muslim cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri, whose high-profile trial is under way in London's Old Bailey Criminal Court, of preaching murder and hatred, telling followers that the world should be run by a Muslim caliphate "sitting in the White House" and that it was legitimate to kill foes of Islamic law.

Al-Masri is accused of 15 counts of conspiracy to murder and using threatening, abusive and insulting language and behavior in incitement to religious hatred. In addition, he is charged with possessing material and documents relating to terrorist activities. The trial is expected to last four weeks.

Al-Masri is missing one eye and both hands, injuries he said he suffered during the war against Soviet troops in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

He was arrested in May 2004 after being indicted in the United States on charges of helping in an abortive plan to establish a terrorist training camp in Oregon and conspiring to take hostages in Yemen. British authorities later brought the charges on which he is now being tried, pre-empting his extradition to the United States.

Al-Masri became well-known as the radical preacher at North London's Finsbury Park mosque. The mosque was considered a crossroads for terrorists such as shoe bomber Richard Reid before and after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

The trial is the first involving a high-profile imam since July's deadly bombings on the London public-transit system. Police said those attacks were carried out by Muslim men who attended and became radicalized in British mosques.

Prosecutor David Perry told jurors tapes seized after al-Masri's arrest reveal the defendant accusing Jews of "being blasphemous, traitors and dirty. It's because of their filth that [Adolf] Hitler was sent into the world to torture and humiliate Jews."

The court, presided over by Judge Anthony Hughes, heard that when al-Masri was arrested, searches of his West London home and one other London address netted 2,700 audio tapes and 570 videotapes.

The tapes allegedly chronicle sermons and talks he made between 1997 and 2000, some referring to terrorist attacks, including the suicide bombing of the USS Cole off the coast of Yemen in October 2000 and the slayings of 58 tourists in Luxor, Egypt, in 1997.

He is also charged with possession of a document useful to terrorists titled "The Encyclopedia of Afghani Jihad." Perry told jurors the 10-volume book was dedicated to Osama bin Laden, leader of the al-Qaida terrorism network.

It contained bomb-making instructions, he said, and called for attacks on Big Ben, the Statue of Liberty and the Eiffel Tower, among other things.

Al-Masri, who has said he was exercising his right to free speech, has pleaded not guilty. If convicted, he could face a life sentence.