Head: LONDON: Abu Hamza Al-Masri, the radical Egyptian Muslim cleric who was jailed here for seven years in February, falsely claimed to have fathered a child after moving to Britain, a newspaper said Tuesday.
Abu Hamza, who was sentenced for inciting racial hatred and soliciting murder, claimed on a birth certificate in October 1980 that he was the father of a daughter born to his first wife, Valerie Traverso, The Times said.
Four days after her birth, Hamza told his lawyers to write to Britain s Home Office to apply for permission to stay in the country, saying that he had married an English woman and had become a father, the newspaper said.
Traverso told The Times she was already pregnant when she met Hamza.
Hamza married Traverso 10 months after arriving in Britain. She converted to Islam, but their marriage ended in divorce in August 1984.
It was later claimed that the marriage had been bigamous as she allegedly did not divorce the man she had been married to until more than a year after their wedding.
Details of the bogus entry on her daughter s birth certificate appear in a new book, The Suicide Factory, which is being serialized in The Times.
Abu Hamza, who had been arrested for overstaying in 1980 and given a conditional discharge, allegedly hoped his marriage and his claim to be a father would bolster his application to be allowed to live legally in Britain.
He was given leave to remain in Britain indefinitely in August 1982.
The Times said the disclosure is likely to renew calls for a probe into why the British authorities failed to remove him after he was caught 25 years ago flouting immigration rules.
While Abu Hamza serves his sentence in Britain, the U.S. authorities are seeking to extradite him on terrorism charges. AFP
