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Wednesday, 8 February 2006, 16:45 GMT

Mosque's terror connections

Abu Hamza al-Masri Police say that Finsbury Park Mosque, where extremist Muslim cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri was imam, has been linked to dozens of past al Qaeda-inspired plans.

Newspaper reports on Wednesday suggested that three of the 7 July bombers - Mohammad Sidique Khan, Shehzad Tanweer and Germaine Lindsay - had all heard sermons by Abu Hamza there.

Whitehall officials, however, have cast doubt on The Times story, saying they have no intelligence to connect the cleric and the London bombers.

Some of the terror suspects who did have connections with the mosque, which is now under new management, include:

RICHARD REID

Richard Reid, nicknamed the "shoe bomber", is known to have passed through the mosque.

'Shoe bomber' gets 110 years

Richard Reid

Briton Reid tried to blow up a US passenger plane with explosives in his shoe on board a flight from Paris to Miami in December 2001.

Experts say his shoes were packed with so many powerful explosives, they could have blown a hole in the plane and killed all 197 people on board.

Reid also attended a mosque in Brixton.

He converted to Islam while serving a prison sentence.

ZACARIAS MOUSSAOUI

Moussaoui is the only person to have been convicted in connection with the 11 September attacks.

Hunt for jury on 9/11 plot

Zacarias Moussaoui

He awaits sentencing in the US.

He claimed he was not actually part of the 9/11 plot, but was part of a conspiracy to attack the White House.

The French Moroccan came to Britain from France in the early 1990s to study at London's South Bank University. He graduated in 1997.

His brother, Abd-Samad Moussaoui, was quoted as saying that Zacarias became involved in Islamic extremism while living in London, where he attended Finsbury Park Mosque.

Moussaoui's mother said British extremists turned him from a "happy boy" into a fanatic.

KAMEL BOURGASS

Algerian Bourgass used the mosque as a place to stay, even using it as his postal address for correspondence with the immigration service.

Killer jailed over poison plot

Kamel Bourgass

When he was arrested in January 2003 at a flat in Manchester on suspicion of making poison, he tried to escape before stabbing a police officer to death.

He was jailed for life in 2004.

Bourgass stayed at the mosque in the weeks before his attempts to make ricin were discovered by police.

FEROZ ABBASI

Former terror suspect Feroz Abbasi, from Croydon, London, was released without charge last year after being held as an "enemy combatant" at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Guantanamo Bay Britons

Feroz Abbasi

His mother Zumrati Juma had lost touch with Abbasi in 2000 after he began attending mosques in London, including Finsbury Park.

He effectively moved in there in spring 2000.

Mrs Juma believed he was brainwashed after turning to Islam and joining the mosque.

While there, he helped set up a website for a militant Islamic group before heading for Afghanistan.

DJAMEL BEGHAL

French-Algerian Djamel Beghal is also known to have been involved with the mosque.

Suspect denies Bin Laden link

He is currently in jail in France over an alleged plot to attack the US Embassy in Paris.

He was arrested in Dubai in July 2001 after being found with a fake passport.

In a separate UK court case, it was alleged that he was viewed by Osama Bin Laden as "beyond the pale" because he was so extreme.



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