Militant cleric Abu Hamza, who preached violence and aided al-Qaeda, jailed for life

A US judge on Friday sentenced British hate preacher Abu Hamza to life behind bars for the deadly kidnapping of Western tourists in Yemen and terrorism, calling his crimes “evil” and “barbaric.”

The hook-handed imam, blind in one eye and a double-hand amputee, was a tabloid bogeyman in Britain after the 9/11 attacks for preaching vitriolic, anti-American sermons at the Finsbury Park mosque in north London.

The 56-year-old stared impassively at the table and pursed his lips as Judge Katherine Forrest sentenced him to life behind bars, eight months after he was convicted by a jury on May 19 after a four-week trial.

Abu Hamza would be committed to life imprisonment in US custody, Forrest decided, saying the world could not be safe with such a man at liberty exhorting others to acts of violence.

Blind in one eye and with both hands blown off by an explosives experiment in Pakistan, Abu Hamza, whose real name is Mustafa Kemal Mustafa, alarmed the jury for professing to love al-Qaeda mastermind Osama bin Laden.

Forrest said she had thought long and hard about the severity of the sentence, for a complicated man who was a loved father but who showed no remorse.

“Evil comes in many forms but doesn’t always show itself immediately in all its darkness,” Forrest said. There is “a side of you that this court views as evil”.