'Sept 11 attack was Jewish conspiracy'

Radical Muslim Abu Hamza has astonishingly claimed that a Jewish conspiracy destroyed the Twin Towers.

The Egyptian-born preacher made the bizarre claim in the wake of the conviction of a student in Germany for acting as the 11 September attackers' banker.

Hamza claimed Moroccan student Mounir al-Motassadek, jailed for the maximum 15 years for being an accessory to 3,000 murders, had been framed by German police trying to meet performance targets.

The outburst came at a public appearance in Bethnal Green last night by Hamza, who has been barred from preaching at Finsbury Park mosque.

Hamza also claimed that the US was prepared to "invade Turkey" as part of its alleged attempt to seize control of the Middle East's oil, and accused "Zionists" and American fundamentalist Christians of worshipping the Antichrist.

He told how he he believed the World Trade Center was not brought down by planes hijacked by al Qaeda but by Jewish extremists packing the buildings with explosives.

"We are sure it was a Zionist plot," he said. "From the way the building collapsed you could see the building has been demolished from the inside because there is no way the whole building would just collapse like that."

And the hook-handed cleric, who is being investigated over allegations of housing benefit fraud, accused Jews and Christians of a wider conspiracy to bring an end to Islam.