ABU HAMZA was arrested as an illegal immigrant while working as a doorman at a Soho sex cinema but the courts decided against deporting him.

On the night of 12 December 1980, police carried out a series of raids on Soho clubs. They were looking for unlicensed premises and illegal workers from overseas. At Jan’s Cinema Club on Archer Street, a seedy joint owned (like much of Soho at the time) by a Maltese syndicate, officers arrested a number of people, including the Egyptian doorman.

Abu Hamza’s muscular frame had made him ideal for work as a bouncer. It was relatively well-paid, strictly cash, no questions asked, and involved little more than warding off drunks and protecting the club’s strippers and hostesses from the over-enthusiastic attentions of some of the clientele. The clubs operating on the wrong side of the law always employed security to keep the punters in order and reduce the chances of attracting any police attention.

Jan’s Cinema Club was shut down and the employees rounded up. The doorman was quickly identified as an illegal immigrant and charged.

The following February he was brought before Great Marlborough Street Magistrates’ Court, where past defendants had included Oscar Wilde and Mick Jagger. As Mostafa Kamel Mostafa, he pleaded guilty to the offence of overstaying his visitor’s visa by 15 months.

But he had an effective sob story of love, marriage and fatherhood to tell the court. Furthermore, the magistrates were told, the doorman had already applied to the Home Office to “regularise” his immigration status.

On 3 February 1981, the magistrates handed down a conditional discharge and sent him on his way. Six months later Abu Hamza was granted permission to stay in Britain until May 1982 on the grounds of his marriage to a citizen. His request to stay indefinitely was kept under review.

No one could have known it at the time, but the Great Marlborough Street bench had been presented with the opportunity to deport a man who would become one of the most potent recruiters for a brand of worldwide terrorism that was then unimaginable.

Much has happened since: the grand old courthouse has become a fashionable hotel, restaurant and bar; Jan’s Cinema Club is long gone, and Mostafa the doorman somehow transformed himself into a designated international terrorist.

Explore UK News

• Crime News

• Education News

• Health News

• Science News

• Scotland News

Times Recommends

• Catalogue of failings ‘leaves others at risk’
• Tourists told to stay away amid Venice floods
• Google generation has no need for rote learning