ABU HAMZA sent teams of young supporters around the country with orders to take over other mosques.

Rival clerics have told The Times that they were threatened by gangs claiming to be members of Abu Hamza’s Supporters of Sharia group.

Some of the rivals were beaten up inside their own mosques, and worshippers were bullied into finding somewhere else to pray — but police refused to intervene.

Abu Hamza wanted to acquire more places where he and his lieutenants could brainwash a generation of young men and send them off to terror training camps abroad.

Followers who tired of his antics described how he behaved like a mafia godfather in dealing with anyone who thwarted his will. Two rival imams in London were hospitalised after being attacked, but no police action was taken.

In one of his sermons, heard by the jury during his trial at the Old Bailey, Abu Hamza boasted about his heavy-handed tactics, saying: “If the people know you are firm, they will back down. They all back down.”

His takeover attempts began in the late 1980s when he joined a group of Algerian-born radicals trying to take over the Central London Mosque in Regent’s Park.

Fazli Ali, 66, the former estates manager there, said: “Hamza and his cronies threatened me several times. I was head of security but they even threatened to kill me. Ours was a peaceful place but he wanted to turn it into a political arena.”

The leadership of the mosque banned Abu Hamza from their premises, so he sought out other, more vulnerable, targets around Britain.

These sites not only provided recruiting centres, they were also places for raising cash and a haven to carry out criminal operations such as producing bogus welfare claims and cloning credit cards.

There is evidence of how his supporters tried to seize control of mosques in Luton, Brighton, Burnley and at least another half a dozen towns.

From these places scores of UK-based Muslims and British-born Islamic converts were dispatched abroad to al-Qaeda camps and the authorities concede that they have no idea what became of these men.

A number were killed in fighting or suicide attacks, but most have disappeared.

Imams reported what was happening to police, but say that senior officers were reluctant to interfere in the internal affairs of mosques.

Some imams took Abu Hamza on in the civil courts to try to halt his plans, but such cases were expensive and rarely resolved satisfactorily. Most of his rivals were too scared to stand up to his militia.

The Abu Hamza road-show travelled across the UK, urging his young audiences to oust their elderly imams and use their mosques to recruit “jihadis”, or holy warriors.

After one visit to Burnley, in 1999, tape recordings were made of his sermons and sold in Islamic bookshops.

In one recording, one of Abu Hamza’s followers told the audience: “If we’re a group of people here in Burnley, we’ll take over the whole of Burnley. We have people with Kalashnikovs and you declare jihad against the kuffar (unbeliever). Every single Muslim outside Burnley who does not come and support you is a rebel.”

Shortly after Abu Hamza’s visit, a group of young Muslims left the town for Pakistan, telling their parents that they were going to study in a religious school.

What they were really up to emerged a few months later when two — a university student and a trainee accountant — died when an artillery shell landed on a mosque in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. Five other people died in the incident. The remaining youths returned to their families and confessed that they had been to Taleban training camps.

Muslim elders in Burnley banned Abu Hamza from preaching in any of the town’s mosques. They also reported what had happened to Lancashire police but maintain that no action was taken.

Abu Hamza ousted trustees who opposed him at Finsbury Park, described by police as the honeypot of his recruitment operation. The trustees complained that the police did nothing to help them, and suggested the victims seek a court order to evict the invaders.

Efforts by supporters to seize control of mosques intensified after Finsbury Park was closed down in a police raid in 2003.

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