One of 16 Western tourists kidnapped in Yemen in 1998 has told Abu Hamza's New York terror trial how she feared they would all be killed.
Retired Margaret Thompson, who was shot during a rescue bid and now walks with a heavy limp, was testifying against the hate preacher, who is accused of providing the kidnappers with a satellite phone and paying for credit to use it.
The group of British, US and Australian workers, mostly aged between 45 and 60, was seized on December 28, 1998, while driving to the port city of Aden.
The hostage-takers from the Islamic Army of Aden, who were armed with rifles, hand grenades and rocket-propelled grenades and claimed they were opposed to air strikes in Iraq, drove them into the desert and stripped them of cash and jewellery.
Ms Thompson told how the hostages were caught in a gun battle and used as human shields by their kidnappers when the Yemeni army mounted a rescue attempt the following day.
The former oil company employee said that as the gunfire got more frequent, one of them told the Westerners: "It's goodbye to you all."
Asked what she thought that meant, she replied: "I hoped it meant they were getting ready to release us but I feared it meant we were going to die."
Three of the hostages were grabbed by their shirts and had rifles shoved in their backs as they were made to walk forward towards the gunfire, she told the court.
The hostages were seized in the port city of Aden It was then that Thompson was shot in the left leg from behind, a bullet shattering her femur. She fell backwards and slid down into a bush.
She tried to staunch the bleeding with a scarf before the Yemeni soldiers rescued them and took her to a clinic.
Four of the hostages were killed in the operation.
Mustafa Kamel Mustafa, 56, better known in Britain as Abu Hamza al Masri, has pleaded not guilty to all the charges in the Manhattan federal court.
Blind in one eye and with both hands blown off in an explosion in Afghanistan, he has sat quietly day after day in tracksuit bottoms and a T-shirt, taking notes.
Paul Sykes, 54, who works for the communications company that sold Hamza a satellite phone, told the court the defendant phoned him at 9am British time on December 29 to top up the phone's credit.
But his first two credit cards were declined, causing him to become agitated. Ten minutes later he offered a third card that worked, Sykes said.
Hamza is also charged with conspiracy to set up an al Qaeda-style training camp in Oregon in late 1999, of providing material support to al Qaeda, of wanting to set up a computer lab for the Taliban and of sending recruits for terror training in Afghanistan.
He was indicted in the United States in 2004 and served eight years in prison in Britain before losing his last appeal against extradition in 2012.
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