Via Western ResistanceCOPIES of the Koran were handed to the jurors in the Abu Hamza trial yesterday as his defence argued that some of the cleric’s “offensive” statements were drawn directly from Islam’s holy book.
| Which doesn't make them any less offensive. |
He added: “It is said he was preaching murder, but he was actually preaching from the Koran itself.”
| "Which was preaching murder. Yer honor, this is an entirely different thing! Any litigator can see that!" |
| Which doesn't make blowing up stuff right today. |
The defence counsel said this was “a highly unusual case” because unlike most prosecutions for incitement to murder it did not involve someone telling a specific person to kill an identifiable individual.
Abu Hamza’s sermons had to be viewed in context, coinciding with conflicts in Afghanistan, Algeria, Bosnia, Kosovo and the Palestinian territories. Mr Fitzgerald said that the West had initially been on the side of the Mujahidin in Afghanistan when they were fighting the Soviet Union army. There had even been a James Bond film, The Living Daylights, in which 007 fought alongside the Mujahidin.
He added: “Mr Hamza has said things that most people will find deeply offensive and hateful. But he is not on trial for describing England as a toilet. There is no crime of simply being offensive.”