| Submit your comments on this article |
| Europe |
| In London, Islamic Radicals Found a Haven |
| 2005-07-10 |
| I am seeing an incredible amount written on this topic. On the morning after bombs ripped through the London Underground and crumpled a double-decker bus, four security guards escorted a one-eyed, Egyptian-born cleric, his arms amputated below the elbows from Afghan war injuries, onto the elevated dock of Courtroom No. 1 in Old Bailey, the capital's principal criminal court. Abu Hamza Masri, for years a blood-curdling preacher at a North London mosque allegedly visited by shoe bomber Richard Reid and hijacker trainee Zacarias Moussaoui, listened silently Friday as his lawyer argued about his indictment last January on nine counts of incitement to murder for speeches that allegedly promoted mass violence against non-Muslims. In one speech cited in a British documentary film, Masri urged followers to get an infidel "and crush his head in your arms, so you can wring his throat. Forget wasting a bullet, cut them in half!" Masri's case is just one of several dozen that describe the venom, sprawling shape and deep history of al Qaeda and related extremist groups in London. Osama bin Laden opened a political and media office here as far back as 1994; it closed four years later when his local lieutenant, Khalid Fawwaz, was arrested for aiding al Qaeda's attack on two U.S. embassies in Africa. As bin Laden's ideology of making war on the West spread in the years before Sept. 11, 2001, London became "the Star Wars bar scene" for Islamic radicals, as former White House counterterrorism official Steven Simon called it, attracting a polyglot group of intellectuals, preachers, financiers, arms traders, technology specialists, forgers, travel organizers and foot soldiers. Today, al Qaeda and its offshoots retain broader connections to London than to any other city in Europe, according to evidence from terrorist prosecutions. Evidence shows at least a supporting connection to London groups or individuals in many of the al Qaeda-related attacks of the past seven years. Among them are the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania; the assassination of Afghan militia leader Ahmed Shah Massoud on Sept. 9, 2001; outer rings of the Sept. 11 conspiracy, involving Moussaoui and the surveillance of financial targets in Washington and New York; Reid's attempted shoe bomb attack in December 2001; and the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002. The evidence in these and other cases describes al Qaeda connections here as remarkably diverse, ranging from the core organization's early formation through its phase of elaborately planned global strikes between 1999 and 2001, to its more recent period of diffuse franchises and younger volunteers to an attack this week that authorities here said bears al Qaeda's stamp. In the 1980s and 1990s, between 300 and 600 British citizens passed through Afghan training camps, officials here have acknowledged. Today, several recent cases suggest the seeding of a new generation of British residents who traveled as volunteers to fight with the insurgency in Iraq. On June 15, 2002, at an Islamic community center in Milan, Italy, a cleric with alleged ties to al Qaeda was overheard in conversation with an Arab from Germany, according to a transcript of the wiretap later published in Italy. The Arab spoke of his 10-person cell in Germany and the group's "interest" in Belgium, Spain, the Netherlands, Turkey, Egypt, Italy and France. "But the nerve center is still London," he reported. UK Tony still wants to psychoanalyze these killers. He thinks they kill because they are impoverished, etc. What bullshit! |
| Posted by:Captain America |
| #5 The muslim community can denounce all they want, but they Still are not helping to catch these people. For every terrorist there has to be 20 support personnel. There are people who have no doubt been aproached by the recruiters in london and know who the radicals are. Why, if they are so afraid of a backlash, have the muslims never helped with these cases? |
| Posted by: Ulease Flesing6590 2005-07-10 23:21 |
| #4 Tower of London low? We can hope |
| Posted by: Frank G 2005-07-10 19:16 |
| #3 Sounds as if local London sympathy for Capt. Hook maybe at an alltime low. |
| Posted by: Super Hose 2005-07-10 17:17 |
| #2 Until our DOJ, and the Britts, figures out this is a war and not just a criminal event and treat these acts of hate and planning as a wartime event we will always be a safe haven for terrorists. They will continue to hide in our fee society. We have a choice to make between taking our freedoms away and treating this as a war act. I vote for the war act. |
| Posted by: 49 pan 2005-07-10 14:03 |
| #1 Some found haven Stateside, too. We really need to differentiate those who seek asylum because they are on the good side of the Good v. Evil equation, and those on the other side. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2005-07-10 06:06 |