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Five more British Muslims who were rounded up in Afghanistan are due to be sent to Cuba. All eight of these have extensive Pakistani connections.US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has described the men rounded up to be taken to Cuba as the "hardest of the hardcore" terrorists.
The arrests and the interrogation of these men have shown that Britain has become an even bigger centre for recruiting terrorists than was realised earlier. The leader of an Islamic group said that while a few men had been arrested, the number of British Muslim youth who have joined terrorist movements over the last several years runs into thousands.
"Almost all of the volunteers from Britain are Pakistanis," the leader said. The leader who has often gone on record earlier did not want to be named because he said "the atmosphere is difficult."
The leader of one Islamic group, Al-Madad, who was involved in large-scale recruitment, is now reported to have gone missing. The leader said earlier that his group helped recruit more than 1,000 youths over five years. Two of the British Muslims now at Camp X-Ray, Asif Iqbal, 20, and Shafiq Rasul, 24, left for Pakistan just days after September 11. Hundreds of others flew out in the days and weeks following, according to official sources. Iqbal and Rasul were together in Tipton, a small town in the Midlands area close to Birmingham. But Tipton is not the only place in Britain to house hardcore Islamist militants.
"We enjoy support among Muslim youth
all over the country," the leader of the Islamic recruitment group said.
"When we said before that thousands are enlisting, no one believed us.
Now they are beginning to realise how much support we have in Britain."
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