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The brave agent who exposed Hamza only to be betrayed by MI5

By Sue Reid

PUBLISHED: 11 April 2012

At the Fourth Feathers Youth Club, a run-down building near London’s Baker Street, the Islamic cleric Abu Qatada banged his stick on the wooden floor as he preached a hate-filled speech against the British people.

Sixty Muslim men and boys at the Friday lunchtime prayers listened to the inflammatory sermon of Bin Laden’s right-hand man in Britain, before praying in deep devotion to Allah.

But kneeling among them that day in April 2000 was an undercover spy, Reda Hassaine, working for the British Government. He had been monitoring Abu Qatada’s evil activities for six years – and his cover was about to be blown.

Vindicated: Reda Hassaine at the Fourth Feathers Youth Club

Hassaine had reported to Scotland Yard’s Special Branch and the homeland secret service, MI5, that Abu Qatada and his sidekick, the hook-handed cleric Abu Hamza, were inciting terror attacks in London.

He had seen both men collect thousands of pounds from their congregations to pay to send young British Muslims abroad to train as suicide bombers and then return here.

He had warned his secret service minders that the clerics wanted nothing short of a takeover of the West and its Christian way of life, using any kind of atrocity necessary.

But the Daily Mail can reveal that the secret agent’s vital information was ignored because of a little-known deal described as a ‘covenant of security’ forged between the security agencies and radical Islamists in the UK.

The unwritten, if cynical, pact allowed radical clerics to orchestrate and encourage Islamist attacks abroad. Their brainwashing of young home-grown Muslims here was tolerated by the secret services in the hope there would be no attacks on targets in Britain.

Hamza came to the UK from Egypt as a student in the early 1980s and gained his citizenship through marriage

It is a bitter irony that the pact completely failed to halt the London bombings of 2005, while allowing Qatada, Hamza and other extremists like them to plot and proselytise for years while living in Britain with their families for free – their state benefits funded by taxpayers.

Today, the deal has cost Britain dear. Ministers are struggling to send Abu Qatada back to his home country of Jordan, to stand trial for a string of terrorist atrocities there.  

And yesterday the family of Abu Hamza announced an appeal (which could take months) against a European Court of Human Rights ruling that he should be extradited to the U.S. on terror charges. If he is ever found guilty in America, he would be imprisoned for life.

As for MI5 undercover agent Reda Hassaine, he finds it astounding that such Islamist troublemakers remain on British soil. He blew the whistle on Qatada and Hamza more than a decade ago – paying a big personal price himself for doing so.

Minutes after observing prayers in the Fourth Feathers Club that day in 2000, Hassaine was beaten up by Qatada’s henchmen.
Hassaine recalled: ‘A sidekick of Qatada had learned I was a spy and pointed me out after the sermon that day. At that point, Qatada began to recite a special prayer of jihad, to encourage the killing of anyone who threatens Islam. I immediately sensed I was in trouble.

‘After the service, I walked quickly to the doorway and pulled on my shoes. As I did so, I felt a big kick in my face, another on my head. A group of Abu Qatada’s men punched and hit me. They booted my teeth into the back of my head. I managed to wriggle away and fled into the street. The first thing I did, through my bloodied mouth, was to ring my MI5 minder.’

It was the last time that Algerian-born Hassaine ever saw Abu Qatada in the flesh. Nor, because his cover had been blown, was he able to continue his undercover work watching Abu Hamza.

Controversial: Abu Hamza addresses followers during Friday prayer outside Finsbury Park mosque in north London, in 2004, with the kind of rant that drew attention from the authorities

Worshippers at the Fourth Feathers club, which Qatada hired privately every Friday, and nearby Finsbury Park mosque, where Hamza preached, were well-acquainted and would have tipped each other off about what he was up to. 

But, as Hassaine explained: ‘I had heard their speeches of hate tens of times in the mosques and their prayer meetings.

‘At the Fourth Feathers Club, I saw Qatada brainwash young Muslims, living in Britain from Africa, Somalia, Sudan, Morocco and my own country of Algeria, by urging them to kill Christians and Jews.

‘Qatada preached that if a Muslim became a suicide bomber, he would go to paradise and be able to make love to virgins.

‘He would tell audiences, “Today is the time for war against the West. Our duty is to destroy them before they destroy us and Islam”.

‘At the Finsbury Park mosque, I watched Hamza urge young worshippers to train for jihad (holy Islamic war against the West) and go to training camps in Afghanistan. There were even discussions at the mosque among his followers about how to launch chemical and biological attacks on Britain.’

Adds Hassaine: ‘I told my three secret service minders (who were called Stephen, Richard and Mark) everything I witnessed. They saw my reports, which I wrote up every night, and heard my warnings. But they did nothing. The West and Britain have suffered for that ever since.’

Hassaine’s revelations are particularly pertinent now. Seven weeks ago, Qatada was released from Long Lartin top security jail in Worcestershire, where he has spent the best part of a decade fighting extradition to his home country.

He was granted bail following a European Court of Human Rights ruling that he should not be deported to Jordan (where he has been convicted in his absence for planning terrorist attacks) because, it’s claimed, he would not receive a fair  trial there.

He is now staying under 22-hours-a-day curfew in London, living with his wife and five children on state benefits. Up to 60 police will guard him round the clock at a cost of millions a year.

Home Secretary Theresa May recently travelled to Jordan to discuss ways the Government might overcome the European ruling and send him back there.

Fanatic: Abu Qatada was allowed to stay in the UK instead of being deported to Jordan

Hassaine is not surprised that Qatada was granted asylum in Britain. A former newspaper editor, a Muslim and an Arab speaker, he came to Britain in the 1990s. Accompanied by his baby son and wife, he was fleeing the Islamist uprisings in his own country of Algeria, where 70 journalists had been murdered.

In London, he was soon contacted by the Algerian and French secret services. They asked him to go undercover into the mosques and report on how Islamists were establishing a powerbase here and plotting against the ‘infidels’ of the West.

Hassaine also volunteered to work for Scotland Yard’s Special Branch, which in turn passed him on to MI5. He was then contracted – at a pitiful £380 a month plus expenses – to infiltrate Qatada and Hamza’s world, make friends with their aides and gain their trust.

Diaries, tapes, notes and reports that Hassaine collected while he conducted surveillance operations reveal the true nature of these men’s threat to Britain.

A recording of Qatada, made in 1999 and in the file, reveals him preaching that every Muslim child in Britain should spend four hours a day in the mosque being taught about the evil influences of life in a Christian country. Hassaine reported back to MI5 about the huge sums of money being collected in the mosques to finance trips by extremist young British Muslims to terrorist training camps.

Ruling Court: The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, where judges will decided whether Abu Hamza can be extradited in appeal

He passed his findings to the MI5 minders during clandestine meetings at hotels, including the Holiday Inn in London’s Victoria, when a room was routinely booked under the name ‘Abbey’.

In 1999, Hassaine told his minders that Abu Qatada had made a speech to his followers advocating the killing of Jews and praising terrorist attacks in the West.

Although Qatada was eventually arrested in Britain over his suspected involvement in a plot by Islamists to bomb the Christmas market in Strasbourg, France, he was freed without charge.

It was only in 2002 that he was jailed in London after German police found tapes of his war-mongering sermons in a flat used by some of the 9/11 suicide bombers before the Twin Towers attack on New York.

In 2005 he was freed, but was  re-arrested under anti-terror laws five months later. He has used every twist and turn of human rights laws to escape extradition to Jordan where he is wanted over terror atrocities and, of course, is now out from jail and living at the taxpayers’ expense.

Home Secretary Theresa May recently travelled to Jordan to discuss ways the Government might overcome the European ruling and send him back there

Referring to the controversial ‘covenant of security’ that allowed radical clerics to continue to foment hatred against the West on condition they didn’t perpetrate terror attacks on British soil, Hassaine says: ‘I am sickened by how Britain has allowed him to live here.’

He continues: ‘I told MI5 and  Scotland Yard time and again how Qatada and his followers laugh behind their backs. They hate Britain and want to turn this country into an Islamic state.’

Hamza, who came to the UK from Egypt as a student in the early 1980s, met and married an English woman from whom he was later divorced. The marriage gave him the right to British citizenship.

He showed his true colours by  travelling to Afghanistan to wage a ‘jihad’ during the Soviet occupation, suffering injuries to his hands, which were blown off.

On his return he began preaching his radical sermons at Finsbury Park, stoking up discontent by praising Osama Bin Laden in the wake of the Twin Towers attacks.

He was finally arrested and is now serving seven years for soliciting to murder and inciting racial hatred.

He is also accused of helping his followers meet Taliban commanders in Afghanistan and is wanted in America in connection with the taking of 16 hostages in Yemen. After being jailed here, Hamza has been fighting extradition (with his legal bills paid for by the state) ever since.

So why, you might wonder, were Qatada and Hamza not hurled out of Britain years ago – using the evidence of undercover agent Hassaine?

Seven years ago, former MI5 chief Dame Stella Rimington was asked on television why the security services had not listened to Hassaine, whose name had emerged publicly in newspaper and television investigations into the radical mosques.

She said his information was ‘crucial’ in the war against terror, but never acted on to protect Hassaine himself from being killed as an undercover informant. 

Influential: Followers of the radical cleric sit on the ground as he delivers a speech. The words were so incendiary that policeman had to watch

The spy has different views. ‘I always felt the British secret services didn’t realise the seriousness of what I was telling them. Sometimes, I felt like screaming at my minders, “Don’t you understand the risks these people pose?”

‘I heard them talking of how wonderful it would be to bomb the London Underground years before it happened seven years ago.

‘They talked about how to set off car bombs and ways to commit mass murder. They turned the heads of thousands of young Muslims who left their prayer and mosque meetings mesmerised and hating Britain.

‘But telling your security services was like talking to a brick wall.’

It was only much later, in the same year as the London bombing when Qatada made a failed appeal against detention under anti-terrorism laws, that Hassaine was taken seriously.

Information provided by MI5 was presented in the High Court to the judge, Mr Justice Collins. Qatada’s ‘kill the Jews’ speech – reported to the secret services by Hassaine – was mentioned. The judge said it was a good reason to dismiss Qatada’s appeal.

The preacher, said the judge, was ‘heavily involved and at the centre of terrorist activities in the UK associated with Al Qaeda. He is a truly dangerous individual’.

At last, Hassaine felt vindicated.

Today, he has few teeth left – a physical legacy of the day he was beaten up at the Fourth Feathers. After the attack, Hassaine never worked for the British secret services again. In recent years, he has resumed his journalist work, living in North London, but is still afraid.

He says: ‘I gave MI5 and Scotland Yard everything I knew – and nearly lost my life in the mosque attack.

‘My minders begged me not to report the attack to the police – saying any court case would make public that these mosques were under surveillance by the secret services. I obeyed that request.

‘Now, when I see Qatada and Hamza running rings around the British Government again, I wish they had listened to my warnings.’

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2127942/Reda-Hassaine-The-brave-agent-exposed-Abu-Hamza-betrayed-MI5.html#ixzz1rkcg4GE7

 

‘Qatada smiled as his evil thugs beat me up for being MI5 spy’

 

‘Betrayal’ … ex-MI5 recruit Reda Hassaine

 

Exclusive

 

By TOM WELLS

Published: 24th February 2012

The bespectacled 50-year-old was rumbled at a militant meeting and tried to flee — only to be battered to the ground as the fanatic’s followers put the boot in.

Spooks who recruited operative Reda Hassaine for his fluency in Arabic then washed their hands of him — because he wanted Qatada prosecuted and they did NOT.

The horrified spy, who had repeatedly laid his life on the line to gather intelligence on the cleric, was told that even going to hospital could jeopardise other investigations.

Hassaine said last night: « They dropped me like a hot stone.

« When I was attacked I was kicked in the mouth and lost several teeth. I remember looking up and seeing Qatada smiling. »

Dumped Hassaine, who was born in Algeria and spied on the preacher at North London’s notorious Finsbury Park mosque, stormed: « I gave the British authorities everything they could possibly want about Abu Qatada — and for what? I was telling them 14 years ago how dangerous he was, who he was meeting and the very words of his hate speeches calling for attacks on the West.

« When I was attacked I wanted to prosecute him and his gang.

« Had the authorities done so Qatada could have been on his way out of Britain long, long ago. »

 

 

Spy target … Abu Qatada

 

Hassaine, who also worked for Scotland Yard’s Special Branch, hit out after Qatada walked free this month on bail following 6½ years locked up as a danger to the public.

The bile-spewing cleric, 52, had been battling against being deported to his homeland of Jordan where he is a wanted terrorist.

Human rights judges in Strasbourg sparked uproar when they backed his claim he would not get a fair trial there — and barred the UK from booting him out.

As Hassaine last night revealed his lawsuit, the ex-spy insisted HIS human rights had also been breached — by intelligence chiefs.

 

Campaign … The Sun

He said: « I’ve been told by my lawyers there was a clear breach of their duty of care to me as a secret informant.

 

« The estimated damages could be between £700,000 and £1million. »

He had successfully spent two years passing on information about Muslim fanatics when in April 2000 one of Qatada’s bodyguards — a fellow Algerian — recognised him. The thug tipped off the hate preacher.

 

Join our campaign to kick out Qatada by clicking the petition below.

 

 

The terrified spy tried to get away but was ambushed and beaten to a pulp by raging devotees of the cleric. Hassaine said of his treatment by MI5 handlers in the aftermath of his ordeal: « I was left on my own without any help.

« It took me years to get British citizenship — which I had been promised from the beginning.

« It was a betrayal, but it affected British people too.

« I firmly believe if Qatada and his men had been investigated over this attack in 2000 he might have been out of the UK by now.

« I am so angry about the way I was treated and I want the matter dealt with at long last. »

If he wins his lawsuit it will add to the monumental bill Qatada has lumbered British taxpayers with.

A 60-strong team of cops are having to guard his home in Wembley, North London — where the extremist wears a tag and is subject to a 22-hour curfew.

That is costing a whopping £500,000 a year.

 

Haunt … Finsbury Park mosque

Meanwhile benefits, prison bills and legal fees for the al-Qaeda sympathiser are estimated to have milked the public purse of more than £1million.

Hassaine, who also spied on Qatada’s fellow hate preacher Abu Hamza, said that if spy chiefs had heeded his warnings more than a decade ago Britain could have been spared the scandalous expense of being stuck with the fanatic.

But they failed to act on the intelligence he gave them. The former spy said:

« Even back then it was clear how dangerous Abu Qatada was to Britain. He was so charismatic with his speeches. He spoke so powerfully in Arabic you could see how people’s heads were turned.

« I watched the young men listening to him and watched him eat their minds with his words.

He would tell them time and time again: ‘Heaven is held by swords — the only way to enter is to use the sword yourself.’ »

Hassaine wrote nightly reports on the cleric’s activities and those of his followers in return for expenses of £380 a month.

He drew up a map of the mosque’s layout and recorded details of Hamza’s security guards.

Soon he was also passing on information about Algerian-born extremists and terrorist plots across Europe. After gaining the trust of Qatada’s followers he spent hours in their company at prayer meetings.

He regularly stole documents from offices belonging to Qatada and Hamza — putting himself in constant danger.

Key information he gleaned in the late 1990s, but which he claims was ignored, included how British Muslims had begun travelling regularly to al-Qaeda’s mecca of Afghanistan.

Then in early 2000 — 18 months before 9/11 — he reported how talk was growing about a « strike back » against the West. The former spy revealed:

« I would give this information to my handlers but at the time they did not appreciate the dangers.

« I believed there was a feeling back then in Britain that because we were giving these extremists houses, benefits and freedom they would not attack the UK.

« When I reported that many young men were flying to Pakistan on false passports I was told: ‘They are free to travel — what can we do?’

« It was only after the 7/7 attacks on London in 2005 that people woke up to the true legacy of Qatada and Hamza’s work here. »

Last night Scotland Yard, which is also named in the planned lawsuit, said: « We are not prepared to discuss undercover policing matters. »

t.wells@the-sun.co.uk

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Spy who infiltrated Qatada

mosque « to sue MI5 for £1m »

By Damien Gayle

‘

An MI5 recruit has vowed to sue the spy agency for £1million over claims he suffered a savage beating at the hands of Abu Qatada’s henchmen when his cover was blown.

Reda Hassaine claims intelligence chiefs breached their duty of care to him as a secret informant by failing to prosecute the gang and failing to act on evidence he provided.

He says that if Qatada and his cronies had been investigated over the alleged attack in 2000, there is a good chance that the cleric could have been successfully deported by now.

The Algerian-born 50-year-old claims that when he was finally caught out by the extremists he was brutally attacked, losing several teeth when one kicked him in the face.

‘I remember looking up and seeing Qatada smiling,’ he told The Sun.

Mr Hassaine has spoken out after Qatada, who is from Jordan, was released on bail this month after more than six years in custody as a potential danger to the public.

The Islamist cleric recently won a long-running battle with the Home Office at the European Court of Human Rights against deportation to his homeland, where he is a wanted terrorist.

But as Mr Hassaine, who also worked for Scotland Yard’s Special Branch, revealed his lawsuit he insisted that it was his human rights that had been breached by intelligence chiefs.

He claims the spy agencies dropped him ‘like a hot stone’ because he wanted Qatada prosecuted and they did not.

He said lawyers had told him British intelligence had clearly breached its duty of care to him as an informant and that estimated damages could be between £700,000 and £1million.

‘I gave the British authorities everything they could possibly want about Abu Qatada — and for what?’ demanded Mr Hassaine.

‘I was telling them 14 years ago how dangerous he was, who he was meeting and the very words of his hate speeches calling for attacks on the West.’

A hotbed of extremism at the time, al Qaeda operatives including shoebomber Richard Reid and Zacarias Moussaoui, part of the 9/11 gang, attended services there.

Mr Hassaine wrote nightly reports for MI5 on the activities of Qatada and his followers — even stealing documents from them — in exchange for expenses of just £380 each month.

He also spied on Abu Hamza, the hook-handed fanatic who was installed at imam of the mosque in 1996 and helped build its reputation as a centre for radical Islamism in London.

Mr Hassaine told The Sun that he felt it was clear that Jordanian Qatada was a danger to Britain. He described how the power of Qatada’s speeches turned the heads of young Muslim men.

 

Extremists: Abu Qatada, left, and Abu Hamza, right, both of whom were monitored by Mr Hassaine in his work for the secret intelligence services

It was after two years successfully passing on information about to his handlers in the intelligence services that Mr Hassaine was finally rumbled.

One of Qatada’s bodyguards, who was also Algerian, recognised the spy and tipped off the cleric.

Although Mr Hassaine tried to flee, he alleges that Qatada’s followers caught him and battered him to the to the ground.

Mr Hassaine told the Sun his MI5 handlers abandoned him in the aftermath of the attack, telling him that even going to hospital could jeopardise their investigations.

He said he felt betrayed by the agency, but that it was also a betrayal of the British people.

Scotland Yard, which Mr Hassaine is also planning to sue, told MailOnline it could not comment until proceedings are actually started.

The Home Office, which deals with enquiries relating to the intelligence services, refused to comment.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2105860/Spy-Reda-Hassaine-infiltrated-Qatada-mosque-sue-MI5-1m.html#ixzz1nzQtBMXD

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Reda Hassaine, 50, who spied on Qatada for Special Branch and MI5, is said to be claiming that intelligence chiefs failed in their duty of care towards him.

Hassaine, 43, fled Algeria when, as a journalist, he became a target for Islamists. In 1994 he applied to the French embassy in London for French citizenship.

He claims he was asked by the French to spy on Qatada, which led to an introduction to Special Branch before he was passed to MI5.

He then went undercover at Finsbury Park Mosque, where Qatada was a preacher, and tracked people such as shoe bomber Richard Reid and Zacharias Moussaoui, alleged to have been the intended 20th hijacker in the 9/11 attacks.

Both attended Qatada’s Friday prayer meetings at the Four Feathers club. But in April 2000, Hassaine noticed some regulars staring at him. He says he tried to leave quickly but was ambushed. He broke free and ran for his life.

Hassaine said he wanted to prosecute Qatada for the attack, but his handlers did not. « When I was attacked I was kicked in the mouth and lost several teeth. I remember looking up and seeing Qatada smiling. »

Qatada, 52, is now under house arrest in Wembley.

Neither Scotland Yard nor the Home Office would comment on the case.

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Reda Hassaine – The Man With the Golden Gums

by Laura Stuart

We grow up watching James Bond films imagining how glamourous and how just ever- so-slightly dangerous life as a British Government spy might be.

The story of Reda Hassaine in the Daily Mail today seems very short on yachts, jet skis and gorgeous women, in fact it is a tale of  deep betrayal both by Reza Hassaine of his Muslim brothers and by the British government who hired him but who, according to him, dropped him “like a hot stone”.

Reda Hassaine was recruited by MI5 and also worked for Scotland Yard’s Special Branch when presumably, because of his ability to speak Arabic, he was sent to spy on Abu Qatada. Despite the fact that Reda Hassaine reported regularly to MI5 writing nightly reports on Abu Qatada for two years,  in actual fact Abu Qatada has never been charged with any crime in the U.K. The guilty verdict arrived at by a Jordanian court against Abu Qatada is considered unsound due to the fact that the Jordanians are known to use information gained under torture. For this reason the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Britain can not deport Abu Qatada.

Mr Hassaine wrote nightly reports for MI5 on the activities of Qatada and his followers – even stealing documents from them – in exchange for expenses of just £380 each month.

Reza Hassaine was rumbled by Abu Qatada’s body guards who he alleges beat him up and he even lost several teeth, in return for his nightly reports and years of spying MI5 told him he couldn’t even go to the hospital for fear of their operation being compromised, clearly spies are totally expendable for the British Security Services. I really wonder at Muslims or indeed anyone who agrees to spy and live in a murky world of deception but it looks like money is a strong incentive as Reza Hassaine is now going to sue MI5 for a million pounds. Was it worth it?

Muslims are the target of spies at every level with the Government’s “Prevent” strategy requesting Universities to spy on Muslim students, spies being sent into mosques, undercover police pretending to be Muslims to infiltrate peoples homes and mosques and even Muslims asked to report on each other.

I include a link here to something  a sister in Islam wrote about this very issue at the time it became public so that the Islamic viewpoint on spying can be known. Spying on fellow Muslims is clearly prohibited in Islam.

وَالَّذِينَ اتَّخَذُوا مَسْجِدًا ضِرَارًا وَكُفْرًا وَتَفْرِيقًا بَيْنَ الْمُؤْمِنِينَ وَإِرْصَادًا لِّمَنْ حَارَبَ اللَّـهَ وَرَسُولَهُ مِن قَبْلُ ۚ وَلَيَحْلِفُنَّ إِنْ أَرَدْنَا إِلَّا الْحُسْنَىٰ ۖ وَاللَّـهُ يَشْهَدُ إِنَّهُمْ لَكَاذِبُونَ ﴿١٠٧﴾

[9:107]

And [there are] those [hypocrites] who took for themselves a mosque for causing harm and disbelief and division among the believers and as a station for whoever had warred against Allah and His Messenger before. And they will surely swear, “We intended only the best.” And Allah testifies that indeed they are liars.

 

 

Posted by Laura Stuart on February 26, 2012.