London Finsbury Park Mosque had past links to Al-Qaeda other terror groups

The London Finsbury Park Mosque that was attacked earlier today had past links to Al-Qaeda and other terror groups.

Excerpt from Heavy:

The mosque is very controversial for its ties to radical preachers, but it has tried to remake itself in recent years.

According to BBC, “Finsbury Park Mosque has long been synonymous with the worst fears about Islamist extremism in Britain. The mosque’s new leadership have been struggling to reclaim it for the local community – but that struggle raises questions about who runs mosques in Britain.”

“The £8m Finsbury Park Mosque opened in 1988. And with one of the then biggest prayer halls in Britain, many Muslims regarded it as a major milestone,” BBC wrote. “But by the late 1990s, amid the growth of radical Islamism, it had become a meeting place for extreme voices, including that of Abu Hamza.”

The mosque was visited by “Kamel Bourgass, an Algerian man jailed for the murder of a policeman and an alleged ricin poison plot,” BBC reported.

According to the Telegraph, “The Finsbury Park mosque was long known to have served as a clearing house for radical Muslims after Hamza arrived as imam in 1997. His hate-filled rants inspired attendees such as Richard Reid, the failed “shoe bomber”, Zacarias Moussaoui, one of the 9/11 terror plotters, and Mohammed Sidique Khan, one of the four suicide bombers who blew themselves up on public transport in London on July 7, 2005.”

Islington Gazette noted that the mosque “has been listed – along with a handful of other British Muslim organisations – on a database called World-Check, which is owned by news agency Thomson Reuters.”

Added the newspaper, “The revelations came in a BBC Radio 4 documentary in which journalist Peter Oborne was given access to the list, and found Finsbury Park Mosque’s classification was due to its previous affiliation with radical preacher Abu Hamza in the 1990s and its alleged links to the 7/7 London bombings and shoe bomb terrorist Richard Reid.”

This was a very interesting piece of evidence in a situation that is still unraveling. If the attacker knew about the links this Mosque used to have to terror groups it may help us get closer to finding a motive behind the attack.