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Long before bombings ripped through London on Thursday, Britain had become a breeding ground for hate, fed by a militant version of Islam.
For two years, extremists like Sheik Omar Bakri Mohammed, a 47-year-old Syrian-born cleric, have played to ever-larger crowds, calling for holy war against Britain and exhorting young Muslim men to join the insurgency in Iraq. In a newspaper interview in April 2004, he warned that "a very well-organized" London-based group, Al Qaeda Europe, was "on the verge of launching a big operation" here.
In a sermon attended by more than 500 people in a central London meeting hall last December, Sheik Omar vowed that if Western governments did not change their policies, Muslims would give them "a 9/11, day after day after day."
If London became a magnet for fiery preachers, it also became a destination for men willing to carry out their threats. For a decade, the city has been a crossroads for would-be terrorists who used it as a home base, where they could raise money, recruit members and draw inspiration from the militant messages.
Among them were terrorists involved in attacks in Madrid, Casablanca, Saudi Arabia, Israel and in the Sept. 11 plot. Zacarias Moussaoui, the only man charged in the United States in the 9/11 attacks, and Richard C. Reid, the convicted shoe-bomber, both prayed at the Finsbury Park mosque in north London. The mosque's former leader, Abu Hamza al-Masri openly preached violence for years before the authorities arrested him in April 2004.
Although Britain has passed a series of antiterrorist and immigration laws and made nearly 800 arrests since Sept. 11, 2001, critics have charged that its deep tradition of civil liberties and protection of political activists have made the country a haven for terrorists. The British government has drawn particular criticism from other countries over its refusal to extradite terrorism suspects.
For years, there was a widely held belief that Britain's tolerance helped stave off any Islamic attacks at home. But the anger of London's militant clerics turned on Britain after it offered unwavering support for the American-led invasion of Iraq. On Thursday morning, an attack long foreseen by worried counterterrorism officials became a reality.
"The terrorists have come home," said a senior intelligence official based in Europe, who works often with British officials. "It is payback time for a policy that was, in my opinion, an irresponsible policy of the British government to allow these networks to flourish inside Britain."
Those policies have been a matter of intense debate within the government, with the courts, the Blair government and members of Parliament frequently opposing one another.
For example, when the Parliament considered a bill in March that would have allowed the government to impose tough controls on terror suspects - like house arrests, curfews and electronic tagging - some legislators objected, saying it would erode civil liberties. "It does not secure the nation," William Cash, of the House of Commons, said of the bill. "It is liable to create further trouble and dissension among those whom we are seeking to control - the terrorists." The measure is still pending.
Investigators examining Thursday's attacks, which left at least 49 dead and 700 injured, are pursuing a theory that the bombers were part of a homegrown sleeper cell, which may or may not have had foreign support for the bomb-making phase of the operation.
If that theory proves true, it would reflect the transformation of the terror threat around Europe. With much of Al Qaeda's hierarchy either captured or killed, a new, more nimble terrorist force has emerged on the continent, comprising mostly semiautonomous, Qaeda-inspired local groups that are believed to be operating in France, Switzerland, Spain, Italy and other countries.
"Terrorists are not strangers, foreigners," said Bruno Lemaire, adviser to Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin of France. "They're insiders, well integrated inside the country."
Another senior intelligence official based in Europe said the fear was that there would be additional attacks in other European cities by homegrown sleeper cells inspired by Al Qaeda and by the attacks in Casablanca, Madrid and now London.
"This is exactly what we are going to witness in Europe: most of the attacks will be carried out by local groups, the people who have been here for a long time, well integrated into the fabric of society," the official said.
Well before Thursday's bombings, British officials predicted a terrorist attack in their country. In a speech in October 2003, Eliza Manningham-Buller, the director general of MI5, Britain's domestic intelligence agency, said she saw "no prospect of a significant reduction in the threat posed to the U.K. and its interests from Islamist terrorism over the next five years, and I fear for a considerable number of years thereafter."
Britain's challenge to detect militants on its soil is particularly difficult.
Counterterrorism officials estimate that 10,000 to 15,000 Muslims living in Britain are supporters of Al Qaeda. Among that number, officials believe that as many as 600 men were trained in camps connected with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and elsewhere.
British investigators say that identifying Islamic militants among the two million Muslims living here, about 4 percent of the population, is especially hard. The Muslim community here is the most diverse of any in Europe in terms of ethnic origins, culture, history, language, politics and class. More than 60 percent of the community comes not from North African or Gulf Arab countries, but from countries like Pakistan, India and Bangladesh.
Before Sept. 11, 2001, British officials monitored radical Islamists but generally stopped short of arresting or extraditing them. After Sept. 11, the government passed legislation that allowed indefinite detention of terrorism suspects. But last year, it was overturned by Britain's highest court, the Law Lords, as a violation of human rights law.
Complicating Britain's antiterrorism strategy is its refusal or delays of requests for extradition of suspects by some allies, including the United States, France, Spain and Morocco.
Moroccan authorities, for example, are seeking the return of Mohammed el-Guerbozi, a battle-hardened veteran of Afghanistan who they say planned the May 2003 attacks in Casablanca, which killed 45 people. He has also been identified as a founder of the Moroccan Combatant Islamic Group, cited by the United Nations as a terrorist network connected to Al Qaeda. An operative in that group, Noureddine Nifa, told investigators that the organization had sleeper cells prepared to mount synchronized bombings in Britain, France, Italy, Belgium and Canada. In an interview last year, Gen. Hamidou Laanigri, Morocco's chief of security, said Osama bin Laden authorized Mr. Guerbozi to open a training camp for Moroccans in Afghanistan in the beginning of 2001. Last December, Mr. Guerbozi was convicted in absentia in Morocco for his involvement in the Casablanca attacks and sentenced to 20 years.
But the British government has no extradition treaty with Morocco and has refused to extradite Mr. Guerbozi, a father of six who lives in a rundown apartment in north London. British officials say there is not enough evidence to arrest him, General Laanigri said.
Similarly, Baltasar Garzón, a Spanish investigating magistrate, has requested extradition of Abu Qatada, a radical Muslim cleric living in Britain who received political refugee status in the early 1990's. A Palestinian with Jordanian nationality, Mr. Qatada is described in court documents as the spiritual leader of Al Qaeda in Europe. Although Mr. Qatada was put under house arrest in 2002 and then arrested, he was freed in March and put into an observation program.
He is also wanted in Jordan, where he has been given a 15-year prison sentence in absentia for his connection to bomb attacks during 1998.
For 10 years, France has been fighting for the extradition of Rachid Ramda, a 35-year-old Algerian, over his suspected role in a bombing in Paris in 1995 staged by Algeria's militant Armed Islamic Group. Much to the irritation of the French, three years ago, Britain's High Court blocked a Home Office order to hand him over, citing allegations that his co-defendants gave testimony under torture by the French.
Last week, Mr. Clarke, the home secretary, approved the extradition order, but Mr. Ramda is appealing.
Another prime terrorism suspect who operated in London for years is Mustafa Setmarian Nasar, the suspected mastermind of the Madrid bombings. Although the authorities now cannot find him, he is believed to have visited Britain often and lived here openly from 1995 to 1998.
Officials believe he tried to organize his own extremist group before Sept. 11, but afterward officials say he pledged loyalty to Osama bin Laden. He lived in north London and was the editor of a militant Islamist magazine, Al Ansar, which is published here, distributed at some mosques in Western Europe and closely monitored by British security officials.
Across Britain since Sept. 11, 2001, nearly 800 people have been arrested under the Terrorism Act of 2000, according to recent police records. Of that number, 121 were charged with terrorism related crimes, but only 21 people have been convicted.
In one of the biggest antiterrorism cases made here, Scotland Yard arrested 12 men and charged them with making traces of the poison ricin inside an apartment in Wood Green, in north London, in January 2003. But 11 of the 12 men were acquitted without trial based on a lack of evidence.
Since Thursday's attacks, there have been calls for a crackdown on radical Muslims, including some from Britain's Muslim leaders.
"As far as I am concerned these people are not British," said Lord Nizar Ahmed, one of the few Muslims in the House of Lords. "They are foreign ideological preachers of hate who have been threatening our national security and encouraging young people into militancy. They should be put away and sent back to their countries."
He added, "They created a whole new breeding ground for recruitment to radicalism."
Even last week's bombings did little to curtail the rhetoric of some of the most radical leaders, who criticized Prime Minister Tony Blair for saying that the bombings appeared to be the work of Islamic terrorists.
"This shows me that he is an enemy of Islam," Abu Abdullah, a self-appointed preacher and the spokesman for the radical group Supporters of Shariah, said in an interview on Friday, adding, "Sometimes when you see how people speak, it shows you who your enemies are."
Mr. Abdullah declared that those British citizens who re-elected Mr. Blair "have blood on their hands" because British soldiers are killing Muslims. He also said that the British government, not Muslims, "have their hands" in the bombings, explaining, "They want to go on with their fight against Islam."
Imran Waheed, a spokesman for a radical British-based group, Hizb ut Tahrir, which is allowed to function here but is banned in Germany and much of the Muslim world, said: "When Westerners get killed, the world cries. But if Muslims get killed in Iraq or Afghanistan, it's the smallest of news. I will condemn what happened in London only after there is the promise from Western leaders to condemn what they have done in Falluja and other parts of Iraq and in Afghanistan."
So far, there appears to be little effort to restrain outspoken clerics, including prominent extremists like Sheik Omar, who has reportedly been under investigation by Scotland Yard.
Sheik Omar, who remains free, is an example of the double-edged policies in Britain. He is a political refugee who was given asylum 19 years ago and is supported by public assistance. Asked in an interview in May how he felt about being barred from obtaining British citizenship, he replied, "I don't want to become a citizen of hell."
Information Sought on British Man
By The New York Times
LONDON, July 8 - British law enforcement officials investigating the terrorist attacks here asked their counterparts in Germany and Belgium for information about a London man who is accused by the Moroccan government of engineering the May 2003 terrorist attacks in Casablanca, two officials said Saturday.
The man, Mohammed el-Guerbozi, 48, a British citizen who was born in Morocco, has lived in London for nearly two decades.
At a news conference, Scotland Yard officials denied that Mr. Guerbozi was a suspect in the bombing attacks on Thursday. But on Saturday night, senior British officials said that for caution's sake, they had asked several countries in Europe for information about Mr. Guerbozi and his contacts.
Several news organizations in recent days reported that Mr. Guerbozi had fled London on Thursday. But in a telephone interview Saturday night, he said he was still in London and denied any involvement in the London bombings.
"Nothing is true," said Mr. Guerbozi. "What they said about me after the Madrid bombings, they are saying it again and the media are writing the same things. It is not true. Now they say that I fled from London, but this is not true. I'm here."
Mr. Guerbozi said he offered to speak with the British police, but they did not accept his offer. "I'm not in the mountains and I'm not in the forest," he said. "I'm in hiding and the intelligence service and the police know where I am." |
HT to LGF