ABU HAMZA groomed a generation of young Muslims to kill and be killed in terror attacks. Using his Finsbury Park mosque as a recruiting centre the fanatical imam helped to brainwash his followers before sending them abroad to al-Qaeda training camps to be given their lethal orders.

For years the intelligence agencies failed to grasp what a sinister figure he was, dismissing the former nightclub bouncer who lost his hands in a mysterious explosion in Afghanistan as a publicity-seeking loudmouth.

They ignored informers who warned them how volunteers eager to embrace his call to fight a holy war, or jihad, came from across the globe to his corner of North London.

Among them was the man who murdered a Manchester policeman and was linked to a ricin poison plot; a South London petty criminal who converted to Islam and tried to bring down a transatlantic flight with a shoe bomb and a British father of three who tried to blow up a Tel Aviv nightclub.

There was also a handful of young men, born and brought up in Yorkshire, who would detonate homemade bombs among rush-hour passengers in London, killing 52 people on July 7 last year.

As Abu Hamza began his seven-year jail sentence last night what still worries the intelligence agencies is that they neither know the identities nor the whereabouts of hundreds of other recruits who passed through the mosque.

There was nothing in Abu Hamza’s early years to suggest that he would become a talent spotter for al-Qaeda and other terror organisations.

He was born Mostafa Kemal Mostafa in 1958 in Egypt, the son of an army officer who enjoyed a comfortable and cosseted life until he emigrated to Britain in 1979 as a student, keen to enjoy the pleasures of the West. The young Mostafa was a handsome man, with bulging biceps who wore T-shirts and jeans and enjoyed a reputation as a womaniser.

He worked as a hotel night porter and later as a Soho nightclub bouncer and within a year had married an Englishwoman, Valerie Traverso (now known as Fleming). After their wedding he wasted no time in seeking British nationality.

The couple had one son before they divorced in 1984. Within three months he married, in an Islamic ceremony, his second wife, Nagat.

His interest in religion, he claims, began as a reaction to the racism encountered on Britain’s streets. Between 1986 and 1989 he studied civil engineering at Brighton Polytechnic, earning a second-class degree.

He spent hours memorising the Koran and in 1987 he went on the haj to Saudi Arabia where he met Abdullah Azzam, the Palestinian theologian who inspired the Mujahidin fighting the Soviet Army, but who more importantly was Osama bin Laden’s mentor.

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