London Mirror
Friday, January 19, 2007 

Comment: As ever, the mainstream media lags behind, we wrote this story yesterday. Claim: Bin Laden Told Hamza Al-Qaeda Not Behind 9/11

CONTROVERSIAL Islamic preacher Abu Hamza told one of the alleged 21/7 bomb plotters that terror leader Osama bin Laden was not behind the 9/11 attacks, a court was told today.

A school friend of Yassin Omar's told the trial of the six alleged plotters that hook-handed Hamza had said he knew the al Qaida chief.

Data analyst Steven Bentley told the court that Omar - who he had known since the age of 13, and who played a key role in his own conversion to Islam - had seemed supportive of the Taliban's regime in Afghanistan.

He, Omar and another of the alleged bomb plotters, Adel Yahya, had attended hamza's sermons at Finsbury park mosque, he told the court, along with mosques at Edmonton and Regent's Park.

And when asked about Omar's views on the 9/11 terror attacks on the USA, he said: "He did say that he did not think it was done by Osama bin Laden.

"If I recall correctly he said Abu Hamza said that it was not, that Abu Hamza knew Osama bin Laden."

He told the court that Omar had discussed Islamic states abroad, including those in Afghanistan and Palestine, telling the jurors: "He said about the Taliban establishing an Islamic state in Afghanistan."