North London Central Mosque
The North London Central Mosque is located in the London borough of Finsbury Park , was built in the 1990s and can accommodate up to 1,800 worshipers. The main building opened in 1994 in a ceremony that was also attended by Prince Charles . The mosque is opposite Finsbury Park train station , near the Emirates Stadium of Arsenal football club .
Until 2005 it was known as the Finsbury Park Mosque . The management of the mosque was divided by disputes in the 1990s; this allowed radical Islamist preachers (many of them were refugees from the Algerian civil war ) to take the lead there. In 1996, Abu Hamza al-Masri was appointed imam of the mosque, which subsequently developed a reputation as the center of radical Islamism in London. Since its removal and arrest and the reopening of the mosque under different management in 2005, its orientation has been more moderate again, the new mosque management has condemned the extremist past of the church.
Previous links to terrorism
Al Qaeda members including the “shoe bomber” Richard Reid and Zacarias Moussaoui visited the mosque. In 2002 it was reported that gun drills were being held inside the building.
Beslan hostage-taken in 2004
On October 3, 2004, The Observer revealed that the 46-year-old camel Rabat Bouralha was visiting the mosque. Bouralha and the British nationals Osman Larussi and Yacine Benalia were devoted to the Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev . Basayev boasted of training the men who carried out the Beslan hostage-taking and laid explosives there. Investigators believed that the three men, all Algerian by birth, traveled from London to Chechnya to take part in the fighting there in 2001. As with Bouralha, they are believed to have visited the mosque in Finsbury Park and joined the network of groups loyal to Basayev.
In 2003, a hundred armed police raided the building as part of an investigation into the suspected Wood Green ricin attack. Abu Hamza was finally arrested for seven years in 2006 after being convicted of incitement to murder and hate crimes .
After the mosque reopened in 2005, the new board tried to regain the trust of the population.
Terrorist attack in front of the mosque in 2017
In a terrorist attack with a van on the night of June 19, 2017, 47-year-old Darren Osborne deliberately crashed into a crowd of Muslims in front of the North London Central Mosque, injuring eight people, including two seriously; one died. The perpetrator was overwhelmed by a crowd and arrested by the police.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Finsbury Park mosque's terrorist roll call February 7, 2006, The Independent
- ^ AK-47 training held at London mosque February 17, 2002, guardian.co.uk
- ↑ Finsbury Park: Inside the British Jihad ( Memento of the original from March 2, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. April 8, 2007, Global Politician
- ^ Abu Hamza jailed for seven years February 7, 2006, BBC News
- ^ The battle for the mosque February 7, 2006, BBC News
- ↑ Attack on a mosque in London - police name the terror suspect. In: Spiegel Online . June 19, 2017. Retrieved June 19, 2017 .
Coordinates: 51 ° 33 ′ 49 ″ N , 0 ° 6 ′ 20.4 ″ W.