An American woman who was kidnapped in Yemen is expected to stand up in court against the Islamic hate preacher who orchestrated her terrifying ordeal.



Mary Quin was abducted along with 15 other tourists in 1998 by militants who were instructed by hate preacher Abu Hamza al-Masri.



During the tour group's rescue, she was used as a human shield and four other hostages were killed.

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Facing evil: Mary Quin (left) who was taken hostage in Yemen in 1998 could prove a valuable witness against Cleric Abu Hamza who is charged with orchestrating the attack

In this courtroom sketch, radical Islamist preacher Abu Hamza al-Masri (R) appears before before U.S. Magistrate Judge Frank Maas (L) in Federal Court in New York

Hamza appeared at federal court in New York on Saturday after being extradited from Britain.



Hamza faces 11 counts of criminal conduct related to the taking of 16 hostages in Yemen in 1998, advocating violent jihad in Afghanistan in 2001 and conspiring to establish a jihad training camp in Bly, Oregon, between June 2000 and December 2001.

U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara called the extraditions 'a watershed moment in our nation's efforts to eradicate terrorism.'

He added: 'As is charged, these are men who were at the nerve centers of Al Qaeda's acts of terror, and they caused blood to be shed, lives to be lost, and families to be shattered.'

If found guilty, 54-year-old Hamza is likely to die behind bars.

Ms Quin could be a crucial witness to the trial. After her ordeal in Yemen, she investigated the reasons why her tour group was attacked and discovered that radicals wanted to swop tourists for terror suspects who had been arrested including the son and stepson of Hamza.

The Federal Court in New York, left, where Hamza, sketched right in court, appeared this morning

She traveled to London when she tracked down Hamza at his mosque and demanded he answer her questions to which he agreed. He admitted helping the militants in Yemen carry out the attack.



Ms Quin, 59, who wrote a book about her experiences in 2005, now lives in Anchorage and runs a boutique.

While at court on Saturday, Hamza demanded the return of his notorious hooks. The hate preacher, who lost his hands in an explosion, did not enter a plea during the brief hearing and was remanded in custody ahead of his next appearance on Tuesday.

Ordeal: Ms Quin wrote a book about being kidnapped by militants in the Yemeni desert

The former imam, who had his hooks removed for 'security reasons', has demanded they are returned so 'he can use his arms'.

Also in New York, Adel Abdul Bary and Khaled al-Fawwaz pleaded not guilty while earlier in the day Babar Ahmad and Talha Ahsan pleaded not guilty in a court in Connecticut.

He entered no plea in the Manhattan court, while four other alleged jihadists - Syed Talha Ahsan, Babar Ahmad, Khaled al-Fawwaz and Adel Abdul Bary - all pleaded not guilty to a series of terrorist offences.

Hamza came into court without his recognizable hooks, and with both arms exposed through his short-sleeved blue prison shirt. His court-appointed lawyer, Sabrina Shroff, asked that his prosthetics be immediately returned 'so he can use his arms'.



The Islamist fanatic lost the last of his countless appeals in a legal farce that has seen him thwart extradition from Britain for more than eight years.

An armoured police van collected the hate preacher from HMP Long Lartin in Worcestershire at around 7.30pm on Friday, just a few hours after the decision was made.

The van, heavily flanked by a number of other police vehicles with their emergency lights on, drove more than 130 miles to the U.S Air Force base RAF Mildenhall in Suffolk.

Two planes carrying the suspects took off shortly before midnight. The convoy of vehicles with blue flashing lights earlier entered the military base through a side entrance at 10.10pm after completing the journey in just under three hours.



Paperwork was then completed and after years of fighting against it, the group were successfully handed over to U.S. marshals, who were waiting to escort them on the 3,700-mile flight to the United States.

'Deteriorating health': Abu Hamza asked the High Court to grant him time for an MRI scan as he renewed a long-running legal battle to halt his extradition from the UK to the US



Last week, Hamza’s lawyers – in a move condemned as a blatant delaying tactic – had gone back to court again to claim he was unfit to stand trial.

They said the ‘harsh’ conditions in his cell at HMP Belmarsh had left him unwell, sleep-deprived and depressed – and demanded an MRI scan. After a three-day hearing, a judge at the High Court in London said he was ‘wholly unpersuaded’ by their claims, adding: ‘The sooner he is put on trial, the better.’ Making clear no further appeals would be allowed in the case, Sir John Thomas, President of the Queen’s Bench Division, rejected the idea that Hamza was unfit to plead. If depressed, he said, Hamza could get anti-depressants in the U.S. He also criticised delays in the extradition process, saying it was ‘unacceptable’ that the case should have taken so long, and warning of ‘real dangers’ of a system that allows repeated appeals on issues that had already been decided. The judges also rejected legal challenges by Babar Ahmad, Syed Ahsan, Khaled Al-Fawwaz and Adel Abdul Bary, who were part of the convoy to arrive at the airbase. Justice: Hamza is set to face trial over charges he set up a terrorist training camp in Oregon A 20-seater Gulfstream V jet owned by the US Department of Justice and a privately-owned Dassault Falcon 900 jet were visible from the airfield perimeter.

The two white aircraft were in stark contrast to the base's fleet of United States Air Force KC-135 fuel tanker jets and C-130 transport planes. Official flight records reveal that the twin-engine Gulfstream jet arrived at RAF Mildenhall on Tuesday night after a six hour and 27 minute flight from Reagan National airport in Washington DC. A U.S. Embassy spokeswoman said: 'These extraditions mark the end of a lengthy process of litigation through the UK courts and the ECHR. 'The U.S. government agrees with the ECHR's findings that the conditions of confinement in U.S. prisons - including in maximum security facilities - do not violate European standards.

The Gulfstream aircraft believed to contain Cleric Abu Hamza takes off from RAF Mildenhall in Suffolk just hours after he lost his final legal fight to remain in Britain A Gulfstream aircraft at US airbase RAF Mildenhall in Suffolk shortly before it flew the cleric to the US 'The law enforcement relationship between the United States and United Kingdom is predicated on trust, respect, and the common goals of protecting our nations and eliminating safe havens for criminals, including terrorists.' Hamza, who is missing his right hand and an eye, has celebrated the September 11 terror attacks and preached jihad to a young congregation. Hamza, who was jailed for seven years for soliciting to murder and inciting racial hatred in 2006, first faced an extradition request from America in 2004. All five cases returned to the High Court after judges at the European Court of Human Rights refused to intervene and stop the Home Secretary extraditing them. Between 1999 and 2006, the men were indicted on various terrorism charges in America. Ahmad, a computer expert from south London, and Ahsan are accused of offences including using a website to provide support to terrorists and conspiracy to kill, kidnap, maim or injure persons or damage property in a foreign country.

A cavalcade of police vehicles carrying Hamza leaving HMP Long Lartin in Worcestershire They wanted their removal stopped so that they could challenge a decision by the Director of Public Prosecutions not to allow British businessman Karl Watkin, a campaigner against the UK’s extradition arrangements with the United States, to bring prosecutions against them in the UK. Bary and Al-Fawwaz were indicted - with Osama bin Laden and 20 others - for their alleged involvement in, or support for, the bombing of US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in 1998.

Al-Fawwaz faces more than 269 counts of murder.



Hamza once appeared to embrace Western society and worked as a bouncer in a Soho nightclub. He had a reputation for socializing and heavy drinking when he first came to Britain from Egypt 30 years ago.



Born in Alexandria, he studied civil engineering and in 1984 married a British woman, Valerie Fleming. But throughout the 1980s he slowly began to turn towards a fundamentalist interpretation of the Koran.



In 1990 he divorced his wife and returned to Egypt where he reinvented himself as a Muslim 'holy man' or sheikh. He traveled to Pakistan and then on to Afghanistan which was at the time gripped by civil war as differing factions fought to fill the power vacuum left by the retreat of Russian troops.

It is unclear if he fought there but when he returned to the UK with his British passport in the early 1990s he was missing his right hand and an eye. He claims he lost the hand fighting jihad in Afghanistan.



In 1996 he re-emerged at Finsbury Park Mosque in north London preaching jihad to a young congregation.

Then in January 1999 three British tourists were killed in Yemen, drawing public attention to the civil war between fundamentalists and the secular government there, which accused Abu Hamza of using his mosque to recruit Islamic warriors to the fundamentalist cause.



He was alleged to have been the leader of a cell called Supporters of Sharia. Yemen said that it wanted him extradited.

But Hamza continued to court controversy. Following the September 11 attacks in the US, he said: 'Many people will be happy, jumping up and down at this moment'.

Charges: Imam Abu Hamza al-Masri, pictured addressing his followers near Finsbury Park mosque, north London, in March 2004, now faces terror charges in America

VIDEO: Hamza arrives on U.S soil