Author:
Publication: The Telegraph
Date: March 11, 2001
Introduction: Islamic terrorist
groups say jihad will go on despite new laws
Standing on the steps of 10 Downing
Street in 1998 after a bomb in Omagh in Northern Ireland had killed 28
people, Tony Blair announced that a new Terrorism Act would be enacted
by Parliament, one that would take the fight against international terrorism
beyond the shores of the U.K. The new Act, he said, would make it a specific
offence to conspire to commit terrorist offences outside the UK. It would
target any group suspected of planning or supporting violence, not just
those connected with Northern Ireland.
The new law would target all terrorist
organisations including Muslim, Sikh and Tamil extremist groups which have
so far enjoyed a safe haven in Britain to raise funds, organise acts of
terrorism and induct new members'
As promised, the long-awaited Anti-Terrorism
Act became law on February 19 this year. On February 28, home secretary
Jack Straw listed 21 terrorist organisations which would be proscribed
in Britain, following clearance by both houses of Parliament. These included
the LTTE, Sikh militant groups - the Babbar Khalsa and the International
Sikh Youth Federation, and Kashmiri militant groups like the Lashkar-e-Toiba,
the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen and the Jaish-e-Mohammed, among others.
The backlash was immediate. On Sunday
3rd March, a 20 Ib taxi bomb exploded outside the BBC's main television
centre at White City in West London injuring one man. The bombing was said
to have been the job of the real IRA. The message was clear. Mainland Britain
and beyond would still remain an active place for international terrorist
groups.
The mood was echoed in the mosques
across Britain, where as many as 1800 people are said to be recruited every
year to fight for jihad in Kashmir, Chechnya and Palestine. The Al-Muhajiroun,
an international Islamic group which seeks to establish a world Islamic
state, and which actively recruits young Muslims to go out and fight for
jihad, immediately held weekend meetings to discuss the impact of the Act
and advice the young hotheads who were asking for advice. The group is
headquartered in the UK and led by Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed, a Syrian
exile, who has openly backed the bombing of the US embassies in Kenya and
Tanzania which killed 200 people. The embassy bombings were thought to
be the work of Osama Bin Laden, the millionaire Saudi dissident who operates
from Afghanistan. Osama Bin Laden's Al-Qa'ida group leads the list of banned
organisations, Sheikh Omar is also the judge of the Sheikh Omar is also
the judge of the Shariah Court of the UK.
"With this act, Britain is sending
out a message to Muslims that it is ok to occupy land and criminal to try
to liberate it," Anjem Chaudary, head of the UK chapter of Al-Muhajiroun,
told The Telegraph. "It is the duty of the Muslims to fight against the
oppression of their Muslim brothers in Kashmir, Chechnya and Palestine
and liberate these countries. Now if they support the Hamas or the Hezbollah,
they will be branded as criminals."
Asked whether his orgnisation would
still be recruiting people to go out and fight for jihad, Chaudary, a 34-year-old
British Muslim solicitor of Pakistani extraction, had no doubt at all.
"The youngsters in this country are not like the first and second generation
who came here to make ends meet and survive. They are now searching for
their roots, they have begun to realise the truth. They have learnt that
it is the British who banned the Khilafat and the West that carried out
the crusades against the Muslims... Muslims in this country have the lowest
employment, the worst housing and are subjected to racially motivated crime.
It is a time bomb waiting to explode. With this Act the government has
thrown the match into the furnace. There is a revival of Islam in British
Muslims in the 18-25 year group. They will still continue to fight for
their cause.
"Do you think 1,300 mosques around
the country will stop collecting money for jihad? If anything, they will
be more determined now Jihad is pro-life. It does not target women and
children, and civilians. But the backlash will be felt by Britain. British
interest overseas will be targeted," said Chaudary.
Chaudary would not comment on whether
the number of British Muslims travelling abroad to fight for jihad was
less or more than the British intelligence figure of 900. "I am not authorised
to say that now, under the new laws," he said. The man, who had famously
said in a BBC interview that "One day the black flag of Islam will be flying
over Downing Street", said his organisation would continue to advise British
Muslims to do their duty as the Shariah required.
The issue of young British Muslims
being recruited in mosques, clubs and community groups to go out and fight
overseas has been highlighted in the media over the last few years. It
was a 28-year-old former student of the prestigious London School of Economics,
Ahmed Omar Syed Sheikh, who had kidnapped three British backpackers in
1994 and held them hostage in Delhi demanding the release of 10 jailed
Kashmiri militants. Ahmed Omar, from Wanstead, East London, was foiled
in the attempt and jailed in India. He was one of the terrorists to be
released by external affairs minister Jaswant Singh, after the hijacking
of the Indian Airlines flight IC 814 to Kandahar in December 1999.
Omar had been a distinguished student
at the private Forest School in Snaresbrook, East London, where he gained
top marks in mathematics, economics, English and general studies. After
his release in Afghanistan, Omar was free to return to Britain. At that
time there was no law in Britain that could try him for his crimes committed
in India.
All that will change with the new
law, said India's Deputy High Commissioner to Britain, Hardeep Puri. "The
new law will see that there are no safe havens for these terrorists in
Britain any more." Welcoming the move, he said it would definitely help
in controlling terrorist activity from the UK by putting the brakes on
crucial fund-raising.
The call to ban organisations like
the Lashkar-e-Toiba and the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen was raised by both home
minister L.K. Advani in his talks with his counterpart Jack Straw and by
external affairs minister Jaswant Singh. Sri Lankan President Chandrika
Kumaratunga has also been actively calling for a ban on the LTTE and Russia,
Israel and France have also been protesting to the British that fundamentalist
Islamic groups have been flourishing in the UK.
Organisations like Sakina Security
Services, an international body, funded by wealthy individuals has a course
which trains young British Muslims to fight a jihad in Chechnya and Kashmir.
Recently Adi Yahya, a 25-year-old from North London, told the BBC's Radio
Four that he had spent four months at a military training camp in Kashmir.
"I learned everything with respect to fighting: making bombs, using artillery,
using a kalashnikov, how to ambush," he said.
Sakina sends its recruits to the
US for a two-week fire-arms training course called the Ultimate Jehad Challenge.
It advertises openly on the web and recruits are then sent to fight the
holy war. Sakina's operational head. is Muhammed Jameel, a British-born
Muslim, who is linked to Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed of Al-Muhajiroun.
It was another British Muslim, Bilal
Ahmed, 24, who was the suicide bomber who drove a car filled with ammunition
into an Indian army barrack in Srinagar on Christmas Day last year. The
attack - which killed six Indian soldiers and three Kashmiri students -
was one of the series of bombings carried out to derail the cease-fire
in Kashmir announced during the month of Ramzan. Bilal belonged to the
Jaish-e-Mohammed group, one of the terrorist groups that has been banned
by the UK. Jaish claimed that Bilal was born into a Pakistani family in
Birmingham and became a born-again Muslim at 18. Birmingham is one of the
focal points for recruitment of young British Muslims as it has a large
Pakistani/Mirpuri Kashmiri population. Three of the eight Britons who were
jailed in Yemen in 1998 for a terrorist bomb plot, came from Birmingham.
So entrenched is the politics of
the sub-continent in Birmingham that a party called Justice for Kashmir
has won five council seats in Birmingham in the latest local election,
making it the fourth largest party group in the Council.
Apart from Muslim groups, the British
ban also includes two Sikh terrorist groups, the Babbar Khalsa and the
International Sikh Youth Federation (ISYF). It was two members of the ISYF
- Mukhtiar Singh and Paramjit Singh - who were found in July 2000 to be
a threat to UK national security by the Special Immigration Appeals Committee.
The two militants were accused of planning terrorist activities in India
but they were allowed to stay on in Britain because the commission believed
they would be tortured if they returned to India.
Under the new terrorism law, Mukhtiar
Singh and Paramjit Singh would be charged for conspiring to commit an act
of violence, motivated by political, ideological or religious views.
Under the law, LTTE - which runs
its international secretariat from east London could find that it is under
pressure if it tries to raise funds, or organise an act of violence in
Sri Lanka. But whether the group would find its offices closed in the coming
weeks, could not be confirmed by the Home Office. "That is up to the law
enforcement agencies," the spokesperson said.
Scotland Yard's Anti-Terrorist Squad,
Special Branch and the security services have been working together to
crack down on terrorist groups ever since the law became effective. Four
men - two Algerian, one Jordanian, and one of unknown nationality - were
arrested at homes in north and west London recently on charges of plotting
terrorist acts abroad. They were believed to be connected to Abu Hamza,
an Islamic militant who has called for a holy war against Britain. The
police also cracked down and arrested 10 men believed to be linked with
Al-Qaida, Osama Bin Laden's group, from north and west London, who were
planning to destroy western targets. The men are also linked with the GIA,
an Algerian terrorist organisation responsible for attacks in France. The
police believed they were planning an attack in Strasbourg.
The ban on the organisations could
become effective in about four to five weeks, as soon as the list is cleared
by both Houses of Parliament. Whether it has teeth will be known only in
the coming weeks and months.
"At least the legislation is in
place," said Hardeep Puri. "That's the first step. The rest will follow."
