Background
Hamza was born in Alexandria, Egypt, as Mustafa Kamel Mustafa in 1958, the son of a middle class army officer. In 1979, he entered Britain on a student visa.
His initial reaction to life in Britain was to describe it as "a paradise, where you could do anything you wanted". He studied civil engineering at Brighton Polytechnic College (now known as the University of Brighton).
In the early 1990s, Hamza lived in Bosnia, with a forged identity document, where he fought alongside Bosniaks against Serbs and Croats during the Bosnian War.
He lost both hands and an eye, allegedly whilst on a demining project near Jalalabad, during the war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. He now uses a distinctive hook prosthesis replacing his right hand—which on 21 January 2003 would spark the front page headline "Sling Your Hook" from The Sun newspaper, urging him to leave Britain. CNN reported that Hamza's missing hand and eye were "injuries he says he sustained while tackling a landmine in Afghanistan".
Read more about this topic: Abu Hamza Al-Masri
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