Abu Hamza, indicted under the name Mustafa Kamel Mustafa, entered his
plea at the Manhattan federal court before US District Judge Katherine B
Forrest who set a trial date for August 26 2013. He touched down
in America on Saturday after he was kicked out of the UK following a
failed appeal against extradition at the High Court on Friday. He
was jailed in the UK for seven years for soliciting to murder and
inciting racial hatred in 2006 and first faced an extradition request
from the Americans in 2004.
Hamza has been charged with 11 counts
of criminal conduct related to the taking of 16 hostages in Yemen in
1998, advocating violent jihad in Afghanistan in 2001, and conspiring to
establish a jihad training camp in Bly, Oregon, between June 2000 and
December 2001. Hamza arrived in court on Saturday without the
prosthetic hook he wears in place of one hand and he appeared without
the hook again in court on Monday.
His lawyer Sabrina Shroff said
then that he needed the hook back "otherwise, he will not be able to
function in a civilised manner".
A US Bureau of Prisons
spokeswoman, said: "In general, if an inmate arrives at any of our
facilities with a prosthetic that we believe could pose a danger, it
would not be permitted inside." She said Hamza would be medically
evaluated to determine if other accommodations or devices would be
appropriate.
Hamza is being held before trial in the same federal
lockup where a prison guard lost an eye and was left brain damaged when
he was stabbed with a sharpened comb in 2000 by a terrorism defendant
awaiting trial in the embassy bombings plot.
Khaled al-Fawwaz and
Adel Abdul Bary, two other suspected terrorists extradited from England
with Hamza, are charged with participating in the bombings of embassies
in Tanzania and Kenya in August 1998. Both men pleaded not guilty to
terrorism charges on Saturday and yesterday their trial date was set for
October 2013.
Source: Press Association
