It is not the image most of us have of the man who has become infamous not only for the hook he has in place of an arm, but his fundamentalist Islamic zealotry.

But according to Valerie Fleming, the former wife of Abu Hamza, the man she met and later married changed in just four years from a romantic, gentle, 22-year-old Westernised student who was constantly being courted by girls, into a deeply religious fanatic.

It also seems that it may have been Fleming, a young single mother when she first kissed Abu Hamza in the West London hostel where he worked, who was responsible for his decision to dedicate his life to Islam.

Fleming had given him an ultimatum about his flirting, she says, insisting that it must stop or she would leave him. His response was to say that he would try to change and would follow Islam rigorously.

Only now, she says, does she feel safe enough to talk about the man she married; the man she thought was a romantic lover and wonderful father but who took their son Mohammed to Egypt — ostensibly just for six months to see a sick relative — and kept him there, later taking him to Pakistan for religious instruction. He told the little boy that his mother was dead.

Fleming’s life since meeting Abu Hamza has been haunted by his presence, she says; she has received death threats from his supporters and now fears for her life.

Now a grandmother who has married her fourth husband, she was 26 when she met Hamza in the spring of 1980.

She was then a mother of three and was pregnant with another child, but had broken up with her builder husband, she says. She was on a waiting list for a council flat, and was housed in a third-floor room in a hostel in Paddington, Central London, where she met Abu Hamza.

Mostafa Kamel Mostafa (Hamza’s real name), was a 22-year-old engineering student who six months earlier had come to Britain to study with the blessing of his Egyptian father, who served in the army.

They met when she walked into the hostel with her two children. He was working as the receptionist and she was immediately attracted to the muscular, 6ft-tall Egyptian.

“He had nice, big hands, and dark eyes, and I liked the colour of his skin, a coffee brown. I was really flattered that he was interested in me,” she says.

He was forthcoming and passionate. After knowing each other for a few days, Hamza kissed her. “It happened in the kitchen area, when no one else was around. He made the move.