Al Qaeda supergrass cites radical clerics

BRITAIN - A supergrass for al Qaeda who has admitted his part in a British bomb plot was a follower of two notorious British-based preachers, the Old Bailey heard yesterday.

Mohammed Junaid Babar said he had been influenced by Abu Hamza, the former imam of the Finsbury Park mosque in London, and radical Islamic cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed.

Babar, a 31-year-old Pakistani-born American, was testifying against seven British Muslims charged with plotting to bomb a London nightclub or a shopping centre in Kent.

Babar said he was a member of their cell and met them in Pakistan training camps.

The seven accused have denied conspiring to cause explosions likely to endanger life between 2003 and 2004.

Babar, who has pleaded guilty in a New York federal court to being part of the British plot, has been given immunity in Britain. He told the jury he had travelled from the US to Britain where he met Abu Hamza, jailed for seven years last month for inciting murder. In London he also met Omar Bakri Mohammed, who is now in Lebanon and barred from Britain.

Babar said he was influenced by Omar Bakri Mohammed after he joined the New York branch of his radical organisation Al-Mujaharoun. Asked about Abu Hamza, Babar said: "He had a website called the Supporters of Shariah ... where it had his lectures and books and you could get information about his beliefs and what he thought the solution would be. I did have contact with Sheikh Abu Hamza later on. It was after September 11."

Babar said he became a radical after the 1991 Gulf War.

- INDEPENDENT