OK. This is from events last Thursday. The Judge is going to finish summing up tomorow then its up to the jury. I am exhausted but hope to bring you further up to date.
The trouble with all things “GWOT” as my Republican blogger friends call it is passion. Passion on all sides. Today was a lesson in how experiments with dispassion in the courtroom failed. The Judge had a nice try. Didn't work. Fascinating.
I've got to say that the last few days Mr. Hamza has done well but I am not sure how from this trial the jury can really see who he is. I wish I could show them my footage, how he calmed down over the year I saw him preach. This is extremely emotionally draining. I've been cycling everyday and the nervous tension is getting to my spine. Its only an hour up the river walking to the Old Bailey so I think I am going to walk next week.
Perry has been emphasising the “media keywords” of the GWOT. “The Encylopedia of Afghan Jihad” is “The Terrorist Manual” etcetera. Hamza directs everything towards the Koran and the fact that MI-5 never arrested him for any of this. Because Hamza's voice is amplified and Perry's isn't Hamza has often subtly carried. No idea what the jury must be thinking. They don't look like the type of people who would be interested in any of this.
Fitz finished up with Hamza: Seize, beleaguer, lie in wait, ambush? Surrah 9 vs 5. Had the Police discussed the nature of his sermons? Yes. Contents, ideas, priorities, enemies, suicide bombing, everything. Had he incited anyone to kill in any case? No. Racial hatred? No. In Islam racial hatred is a major sin. Does he hate individual Jewish people? No. He invites them to the mosque for a cup of tea.
The jury left for the Judge to consider how to deal with evidence from Fitz's expert witness to come, a Mr. Seale who was going to talk about the “Encyclopedia of Afghan Jihad”, give a definition of “Jihad” and an expert opinion on the veracity of conflicts Hamza was either giving details about or reacting in anger to on the tapes.
The judge was anxious that Mr Seale confine himself to the facts and not supply any “value judgments” however right they might be. He went over the analysis of the evidence Seal would be giving striking out paragraphs he thought were either irrelevant or contained these “value judgments”.
Fitz took the judge through the “Theatres of conflict” one at a time. He was anxious that the Judge gave a ruling on whether joining a large scale conflict where the locals were resisting illegal occupiers with force could actually be considered self defence and not murder.
Perry argued against this, saying that the case should be centred sort of Whitechapel-Luton-Blackburn and not Bosnia-Kosovo-Chechenya-Palestine-Kashmir-Algeria. Hamzas message. His intentions. Perry went on to say that the Chechen situation “Had not even arisen...” The judge reminded him he had made a reference to Beslan in his opening speech. His face was a picture of regret which made me smile.
“I will do anything to put that right.” he begged.
The judge ruled against Fitz. Violent resistance to occupation wasn't limited to self defence. He allowed reference to Chechnya. He ruled in favour of Mr. Seale giving evidence of conflicts and definitions of Jihad.
First came Rabbi Goldstein, who spoke of amicable dealings with Mr. Hamza in a delicate inter-faith pastoral matter between a lapsed Jew and their Muslim spouse. Next came the Rev. Stephen Coles. As soon as he came into the court room I felt a rare and rejuvinating smile cross my face as I have met Rev. Coles twice before but promised not to blog about him until he came into the story. He spoke of meeting Mr. Hamza in the week of the 9-11 attacks. He has since been in regular contact with Mr. Hamza and visits him in prison. The judge cut into the Rev Coles delivery so I'm not sure it scored with the jury in theatrical terms.
Patrick Seale was worth waiting for. Perry hadn't cross examined either Rabbi or Reverend, but he cross examined Mr. Seale on definitions of Jihad. He supported Hamza's definition over the one Perry relied on, from a friend of his, Zaki Badarwi who had coincidently died days earlier.
He called Mr. Badawi a great friend and a commited pacifist who had worked hard on inter-faith peace. He believed Badawi's views on Jihad to be against mainstream opinion in the Islamic world. Cross-examined about terrorism he got in a “One mans terrorism is another mans freedom fighter” which caused a slight murmuring in the public gallery.
He said that the Encylopedia of Afghan Jihad was a valuable historical document. "I didn't know you had one here. I should like to see it.." When describing the conflicts relevant to the “Hamza tapes” the Judge had to send the jury out at one point as Seal described massacres of thousands and dynamited mosques. This was the first “dispassion faliure”.
The next, and possibly the most poignant one for me was when Mr. Fitz called Mrs. Arani. Perry had a go at her about the “mysterious reapearance” of Volume 6 of the Encyclopedia of Afghan Jihad entilted “Bombs”. Why had she made no record of when Hamza's 16 year old son Osman had casually “dropped it in” to her offices? Why had it not turned up in the 8 hour search of Mr. Hamza's house made with arabic interpreters to retrieve the evidence? If the children had been “playing with it” how come it had no marks of childplay? Of course it wasn't long before Mrs. Arani showed her passion in this, angrily recounting stories of Mrs. Hamza in tears in her arms, relentless media pressure and unhelpful arrangements in the original arrest interviews and since at Belmarsh prison.
Perry triumphantly brought into question Mrs Arani's ability to dispassionately carry out her legal duties, intending the jury to count it against her. I would hope the jury to count this in her favour.
Rabbi and vicar back Abu Hamza
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