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IN THIS SECTION

September 15, 2008

Exclusive: UK: Islamist 'Air Terror Plot' in Focus

Adrian Morgan

On Monday September 8th at Woolwich Crown Court in south London, three Muslims were found guilty of conspiracy to murder. The three men had been among eight individuals who had been on trial since April 3rd this year.

The charges against the eight men concerned an alleged plot to blow seven U.S.-bound planes out of the sky over the Atlantic. This plot had been monitored by police and MI5 for about a year before arrests were made in August 2006. The surveillance operation was code-named "Operation Overt." In August 2006 thirteen people had faced various charges related to the alleged plane-bombing plot, but only eight eventually faced trial.

Though the recent trial has resulted in some convictions, there was disappointment that the jury failed to be satisfied that the plot to blow up planes was adequately proved in court.

The three men who were convicted of conspiracy on Monday were Abdulla Ahmed Ali, Assad Sarwar and Tanvir Hussain. On July 14th the same individuals had admitted conspiring to cause explosions, even though they had denied intending to set off explosions on planes. Ali, Sarwar, Hussain and two other defendants, Ibrahim Savant and Umar Islam, had additionally admitted in July to conspiring to cause a public nuisance. This "public nuisance" would have been the release of videos that they had made, in which they appeared to be making farewell speeches prior to setting off bombs.

The police who had placed the suspects under surveillance prior to their arrests in August 2006, and also the prosecution, make no secrets of their disappointment at the results. The combined costs of the investigation, which involved U.S. and Pakistani intelligence, and the trial have come to £10 million ($17,896,002 million).

Andy Hayman was the Metropolitan Police's assistant commissioner for special operations until he resigned in December 2007. He said: "This was one of our strongest cases – there will have to be an intensive debrief. But now is not the time for that, now is the time to prepare for retrials."

On Wednesday September 10th, the Crown Prosecution Service announced that seven of the eight men who were on trial would be retried. 27-year-old Mohammed Gulzar was the only individual who was not found guilty of any of the charges against him. He alone will not face retrial. The other seven individuals – Abdulla Ahmed Ali, Assad Sarwar, Tanvir Hussain, Ibrahim Savant, Arafat Waheed Khan, Waheed Zaman, and Umar Islam – will again face trial. They are being charged with conspiracy to murder "persons unknown by the detonation of improvised explosive devices on board transatlantic passenger aircraft."

The plot outlined by the prosecution in the recent trial had been led in Britain by Abdulla Ahmed Ali, who sometimes went by the name "Ahmed Ali Khan." The "farewell videos" had been made in his apartment at 386, Forest Road in Walthamstow, northeast London. Though the jury failed to agree on the issue of there being a specific plot to blow up planes, the conviction of the three men on charges of conspiracy to murder showed that they were convinced that the bomb plot was real. The "failure" of the trial appears to stem from issues of technicalities. The motives of the three men who were found guilty on Monday were clearly perceived to be murderous.

The videos that were produced in Ali's apartment were played to the jury. These showed the hatred that the main defendants had to the West. Ali's apartment was bugged with listening devices by the police, who heard the speeches being made for the videos during their surveillance.

Abdulla Ahmed Ali, who acted as the group's London leader, tried to copy the hand gestures used by Mohammed Sidique Khan in his "farewell video." Lacking Khan's skills in communication, Ali's efforts are clumsy, even amateur. Yet his words leave no doubt as to his feelings about the country into which he was born: "...And also I'm doing this because of the rewards, the big rewards that Allah has promised us – we'll step on his path and Inshallah (Allah wiling) become martyred and the best amongst us is in the world is the guarantee of Jannah (Heaven) for myself and those that are close to me. And on top of this, it's to punish and humiliate the Kuffaar (non-Muslims), and to teach them a lesson they will never forget – is to tell them that the we – the Muslims – are a people of honor – we are a people of 'Izza (domination over non-Muslims). We're not cowards, and enough is enough. We have warned you so many times to get out of our lands, and leave us alone. And you have persisted, in trying to humiliate us, kill us, and destroy us – Sheikh Osama warned you many times to leave our lands or you will be destroyed. And now the time has come for you to be destroyed. You have nothing but to expect but floods of martyrdom operations, a volcano of anger and revenge erupting amongst your capital so yes – taste that which you have... made us taste for a long time. And you will build the fruits that you have sown."

Of the eight men whose trial had started on April 3rd, only one man was found not guilty of taking part in any conspiracy. This individual is Mohammad Gulzar. Other individuals admitted conspiracy to cause a public nuisance by creating videos threatening bomb attacks. These were Arafat Waheed Khan, Waheed Zaman, Ibrahim Savant and Umar Islam (who had been known as Brian Young before he converted to Islam).

Ibrahim Savant said in his video: "I have participated within this blessed raid for.. upon the enemies of Islam for several reasons – I have sacrificed my life cheaply, within the sake of Allah noticing myself from the life the trials and tribulations but now will fulfill a covenant and promise with Allah almighty – and to make his deen (way of faith) reign supreme."

Umar Islam was a convert to Islam. He had formerly been known as Brian Young. He came from a West-Indian family. He started his video speech with passion, but halfway through began to read from a piece of paper in front of him, stumbling over certain words.

His speech included the following: "We are doing this in order to gain the pleasure of our lord Allah Subhanna wa Ta'ala (glorified and exalted) as Allah Subhanna wa Ta'ala loves those who strive in his path. And Allah Subhanna wa Ta'ala loves the mujahideen. And Allah Subhanna wa Ta'ala loves us to die and kill in his path. And anyone who tries to deny this then read the Koran and will not be able to deny this, because this is the words in the Koran and the words of Allah Subhanna wa Ta'ala - and we will not leave this path until you leave our lands and until you feel what we are feeling (he looks down at script and reads) This is revenge.. for the actions of the USA in the Muslim lands, and their accomplices, such as the British and the Jews."

"This is a warning to the non-believers that if they do not leave our lands there are many more like us and many more like me, ready to strike until the law of Allah Subhanna wa Ta'ala is established on this earth. To all the non-believers, to all the non-Muslims let it be known that you can never win in this war. never can you win in this war. Even if it seems that you are winning, because of your military strength know that we count it as a victory, as long as we remain steadfast, fighting jihad against you. Know that without doubt that your dead are in Hellfire while the Muslims who die, due to your attacks, will be in the Paradise insha- Allah (by the will of Allah)."

Liquid Explosives

Because the jury failed to agree that a specific plot to attack aircraft had been made by the accused, there were calls for restrictions on liquids to be lifted. Currently only containers holding 100 ml or less of fluid are allowed onto UK flights. Virgin Atlantic is now urging for a review of safety procedures, and even the British government's Ministry of Transport is considering lifting the restrictions on carrying liquids onto flights, coming into force next year.

The threat of liquid explosives is real. One Japanese businessman, Haruki Ikegami, had been blown into two pieces on an airplane flight from Manila on December 11, 1994. He died after terrorist Ramzi Yousef left a small device containing liquid explosives under the seat that Mr Ikegami would sit in. Yousef had planned the World Trade Center bombing of February 26, 1993, which killed six people.

The killing of Mr Ikegami was a test-run for a plot which had been designed by Yousef and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (who would later plan 9/11). This plot was called Operation Bojinka and included a plan to use liquid explosives to bomb 12 US-bound planes while over the Pacific in late January 1995. Details of the plot were found in an apartment in Manila. Ramzi Yousef and two other men were found guilty of the Bojinka plot on September 5, 1996.

In August 2006, the notion of a plot to blow up a plane using liquid explosives was certainly plausible. Days after the arrests of 24 people in Britain, Jamestown revealed that recipes for liquid explosives were proliferating on Islamist websites.

Only a small explosion is enough to cause a pressurized aircraft cabin to rupture. On November 24, 2005 an Algerian who called himself Abbas Boutrab was found guilty of having information "for a purpose connected with the commission, preparation or instigation of an act of terrorism." Boutrab (almost certainly not his real name) had downloaded details of a small device and copied it onto 25 compact discs. On December 24, 2005, Boutrab was jailed for six years.

An explosives expert from the FBI, Donald Sachtleben, had testified at Boutrab's trial. He had made three test bombs. The mixture for these could be disguised in a bottle of baby powder. A detonator could be provided by a battery from a CD player. Sachtleben said that "a person of average intelligence and average mechanical skills" could create the device. In a pressurized cabin, he said, it would "more than likely...cause catastrophic failure".

In the Walthamstow apartment owned by Abdulla Ahmed Ali there were several empty plastic bottles of soft drinks. The prosecution had maintained during the trial that Ali and accomplices had intended to refill the bottles with explosives. According to the argument of lead prosecutor Peter Wright, the explosive fluid would have been detonated with HMTD, which would have been hidden in hollowed-out AA batteries. The power to ignite the HMTD would have come from a wire, or a flash bulb from a throwaway camera.

HMTD (Hexamethylene triperoxide diamine) is only stable when pure. Home-made HMTD is rarely of this quality and can easily combust.

The explosive mixture itself would have been made mainly from hydrogen peroxide, a substance that is easily available, and was used in the London bombings of 7/7, 2005 - killing 52 innocent people – and also in the mixtures that failed to detonate a fortnight later, on July 21, 2005.

In the recent trial, it was said that surveillance of Assad Sarwar, one of the three men convicted of plotting murder, showed him taking empty hydrogen peroxide bottles to a recycling center. Sarwar, who lived in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, stored six of the "suicide videos" in his garage. He bought much of the bomb-making material. He had hidden a suitcase in Kings Wood in High Wycombe. When this was eventually retrieved on August 15, 2006, it was found to contain materials for manufacturing explosive devices.

Dr. Sidney Alford, an explosives specialist, was commissioned by the BBC's Panorama documentary series to show how dangerous a liquid-explosive device could be. Dr. Alford followed the manufacturing procedures explained in the trial. A small sports drink bottle was filled with the hydrogen peroxide=based liquid explosive. After this, a powdered drink concentrate called "Tang" was added to give realistic color to the fluid. The bottle was placed next to the wall of an airplane fuselage which the BBC had retrieved from a scrap merchant. The ensuing explosion blows a hole in the fuselage. The footage can be viewed on video here. Dr Alford explained that if this had happened in flight in a pressurized cabin, the damage would have been far greater.

It has been argued that the U.S. had urged the British authorities to make arrests before they had enough evidence to clearly prove in court the intentions of the alleged plane-bomb plotters. The jury at Woolwich Crown Court, after 50 hours of deliberation, failed to find conclusively that planes were the target for the bottle-bombs.

On July 14, 2008, Assad Sarwar, Tanvir Hussain and Abdulla Ahmed Ali admitted plotting to set off bombs at Heathrow airport, but denied that they had intended to kill anyone. One of the main reasons that the jury failed to find sufficient evidence for a plane-bombing plot was because no tickets had been purchased at the time of the arrests. Two of the accused had still been waiting for their passports in August 2006.

Other targets had apparently also been considered by Abdulla Ahmed Ali and his associates – these included power stations, a gas pipeline, and the national electricity grid. Such plans bear similarities to those hatched by the Operation Crevice plotters.

The failure to successfully convict in a case that possibly represented the most ambitious and potentially deadly terror plot in Britain's history used up time as well as financial resources. As Philip Johnston wrote in the Telegraph newspaper: "More than 200 mobile phones were seized, together with 400 computers and a total of 8,000 CDs, DVDs and computer disks, containing 6,000 gigabytes of data. Nearly 70 homes, businesses and open spaces were searched."

Rewind to August 10, 2006

The alleged plot to blow up planes with liquid explosives burst onto the world's press on the morning of Thursday, August 10, 2006. Arrests had been made from late Wednesday and continued even as then Home Secretary John Reid announced: "Overnight the police, with the full knowledge of ministers, have carried out a major counter-terrorism operation to disrupt what we believe to be a major threat to the UK and international partners. The police, acting with the Security Service MI5, are investigating an alleged plot to bring down a number of aircraft through mid-flight explosions, causing a considerable loss of life."

Abdulla Ahmed Ali and Assad Sarwar were the first to be apprehended. They were arrested at a car park in Walthamstow. Ali had with him a memory stick. This contained details which he had gathered from an Internet cafe concerning flights to North America. Though Ali maintained these flight details concerned a possible holiday, the prosecutors at the trial were convinced these were the targets. The flights were all scheduled to leave Heathrow's Terminal 3 within 35 minutes of each other and for a large part of their journey they would all have been airborne simultaneously.

The listed flights were:

1415 UA931 LHR-SAN FRANCISCO (United Airlines)

1500 AC849 LHR-TORONTO (Air Canada)

1515 AC865 LHR-MONTREAL (Air Canada)

1540 UA959 LHR-CHICAGO (United)

1620 UA925 LHR-WASHINGTON (United)

1635 AA131 LHR-NEW YORK (American Airlines)

1650 AA91 LHR-CHICAGO (American)

Passengers were refused permission to carry liquids onto airplanes. Mothers with nursing babies were only allowed to carry bottles of milk on board if they themselves took a sip to prove the fluid was harmless. Airports across Britain were in chaos as passengers were subjected to stringent checks on their hand luggage.

By 8pm at the end of the day, a total of 21 Muslims had arrested in Britain, mainly from addresses in London, High Wycombe and Birmingham. In al, 24 people would be detained. On August 12, 2006 an open letter in several leading newspapers. This blamed the British government for Muslim terrorism at home, and urged Tony Blair to "change our foreign policy." It stated: "It is our view that current British government policy risks putting civilians at increased risk both in the UK and abroad."

The credibility of the "air-terror plot" was not doubted by national authorities. George W. Bush publicly stated that the West was at war with "Islamic fascism." It had soon emerged that the arrests had followed surveillance of individuals by British, American and Pakistani intelligence services.

The key figure who was then assumed to be, and is still thought to be, the leader of the plot was a man called Rashid (Rachid) Rauf. This man was arrested in Pakistan shortly before the arrests in Britain. According to NBC, he was apprehended on instructions from America. The date of his arrest is debatable, as is the location.

Rauf was either arrested on Wednesday August 9th, at a location along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, or on Friday August 4, 2006 at Rawalpindi, not far from the Pakistani capital. Another account maintains that he was arrested on August 8th at Lodharan Pathak in Punjab. Another version states that Rauf had been arrested at Zhob in Baluchistan province. The Pakistan government denied other claims that Rauf had been arrested in Bahawalpur, and asserted that he had been arrested in Rawalpindi.

His brother Tayib was among those subsequently arrested in Britain, but was never put on trial.

Rashid Rauf had lived with his family in St. Margaret's Road, Ward End, Birmingham. His father Abdul owned a bakery business, Classic Confectionery Supplies. At the back yard of the house was a makeshift madrassa, where the family gave free classes on Islam. The house had been searched after Isaiah Young-Sam, a young black Christian, had been stabbed to death by a Muslim gang during ethnic riots in October 2005.

Rashid had attended Washwood Heath Secondary School and had been a 16-year-old student there in 1996, when Muslim teacher Israr Khan caused a media storm by berating Muslim pupils for taking part in a school carol service. On August 15, 2006, the Mirror newspaper quoted a teacher who was at the school then. He said: "I'm not at all surprised that someone from the school has been implicated. There were some very influential radical elements there."

On April 24, 2002, one of Rashid Rauf's numerous uncles, 54-year-old Mohammed Saeed, had parked the delivery vehicle he used for his work. He was walking to his home when he was set upon. Saeed was stabbed five times in the stomach and died. Rashid Rauf was – and still is – the prime suspect for Saeed's murder. At the start of May he fled from Britain to Bahawalpur in Punjab province, Pakistan.

On August 12, 2006, two days after British airports were mired in chaos and arrests had been made in the UK, the Pakistan Daily Times claimed that money which had been gathered to assist in relief work had been diverted to fund the alleged plane-bombing plot. Large sums had been sent to three individuals in December 2005 in Pakistan by a charity called Muslim Charity. This charity (registered No. 1078488), founded by Shaykh Muhammad Imdad Hussain Pirzada, is based in Retford Nottingham.

Rauf's father Abdul had been a founder of a charity called Crescent Relief but had stepped down from the charity in 2001. On August 26, 2006, the Australian newspaper reported that the UK Charities Commission had frozen this charity's assets. Earlier, the commission had made a statement that "We are aware of the speculation suggesting links between UK charities and the bomb plot. However, we use our legal powers on the basis of evidence."

It is unknown whether the original Daily Times article about links between the alleged plotters and UK charities has any substance. Many conflicting statements were made in the media at that time. On August 19, 2006, the same Pakistani newspaper stated that Abdul Rauf had been arrested at Islamabad International airport. Abdul Rauf later forced an apology from a British newspaper that repeated the claim.

Rashid Rauf was said to be linked to al Qaeda through an individual called Matiur Rehman. This individual, who was said to command the terror group Lashkar-i-Jhangvi, was said to have come from Bahawalpur. Rehman was mentioned frequently in news reports in the West and also in Pakistan. In the immediate aftermath of the British arrests, most information on Rehman originated from ABC News and their "news consultant," Alexis Debat.

GlobalSecurity.org lists the reliability of information on Rehman as having "low confidence." This is related to the credibility of Alexis Debat who has been accused of journalistic fraud. After the end of 2007, when Debat's crediblity was questioned, stories of Rehman in the Pakistani media ceased. A militant leader called Matiur Rehman who was killed in Waziristan in April 2008 is certainly another personage.

According to his wife, Rauf had come to Pakistan to "preach Islam and get religious education. He took admission in a seminary in Multan. He married in 2003 and had two children. Then, he started living in Bahawalpur." He was planning to set up in business, it was claimed.

Though the stories of Rehman being a direct link between Rashid Rauf and al Qaeda are now doubted, Rauf's own reputation as a figure with strong links to al Qaeda has not changed. Rashid Rauf remained in custody in Pakistan after his arrest. On Saturday December 15, 2007, a day before Pakistan's state of emergency came to an end, Rauf appeared in court in Islamabad for an appeal hearing about his detention. At the end of the hearing, he was due to be returned to his cell in Adiala jail in Rawalpindi, the garrison city about half an hour's drive from the capital.

Rauf was escorted back from court by two policemen, and also one of his uncles, Mohammed Rafiq. Along the way, the policemen allowed him to eat at a McDonalds restaurant, and then allowed him to enter a small Rukhshanda mosque where, with his handcuffs apparently removed, he escaped with his uncle. The uncle was arrested, and the two policemen were also arrested.

The uncle had apparently become friendly with the policemen and on other occasions had invited them to his house when they were officially escorting Rashid Rauf. There have been (unsubstantiated) suggestions that Pakistan's military intelligence service, the ISI, had a hand in the disappearance. Rauf is still at large.

The similarity of the alleged air-bombing plot to Operation Bojinka hints at al Qaeda inspiration. On August 15, 2006 Dawn newspaper quoted a Pakistani "intelligence source" who claimed al Qaeda was behind the air terror plot. He said: "It is not Osama bin Laden and itâ¤™s not Ayman Al Zawahiri, but someone close to the rank of Abu Faraj Al-Libbi... Without arresting Rashid Rauf, it would not have been possible to foil the plot." The source confirmed that Matiur Rehman had nothing to do with the (alleged) air-terror plot.

What is known for certain is that there were phone communications between Rashid Rauf and Abdulla Ahmed Ali which were monitored. The information gleaned from these phone communications led to Rauf being arrested, apparently on orders from the United States.

Links to terrorists and extremists

Abdulla Ahmed Ali had traveled fairly extensively before his arrest in a car park. In February 2003 he was in Pakistan, involved in "refugee work." He went on pilgrimage to Mecca in January 2004, and from August 2004 until January 2005 he was again in Pakistan. During this time Mohammed Sidique Khan, leader of the cell that killed 52 people in London on July 7, 2005, was also in Pakistan. Additionally, Muktar Ibrahim, leader of the failed bomb attacks of July 21, 2005, was also in Pakistan at that time.

Abdulla Ahmed Ali was back in Pakistan in June 2005, and in May 2006 he was in Pakistan for a family-related matter. During the trial, Ali spoke in June of assisting a charity at Chatsworth Road in Hackney. He said that three other defendants joined him there – Ibrahim Savant, Arafat Waheed Khan and Tanvir Hussain.

He told the court: "They needed volunteers to go to Pakistan and deliver some of this aid and administer it and I volunteered to do that". It was in connection with this charity that he was in Pakistan in 2003 and 2004. He said that Assad Sarwar and Umair Islam had also gone to Pakistan to assist with this charity. This charity is called the Islamic Medical Association.

There is a charity called the Islamic Medical Association, which is based in Walsall, registered number 280764. Its main spokesman lives in Palmers Green in North London. This man, Dr. A. Majid Katme, is a psychiatrist with some dubious views that can be seen as extremist. Katme's contributions to medical health include recommendations that Muslims avoid "un-Islamic" vaccinations. However, his charity – which makes so little money it would struggle to keep a tumor alive – may not be connected with the charity shop at 19 Chatsworth Road, London E5 0LH, that bears the same name.

The charity shop lies near the Homerton end of Chatsworth Road, where the road becomes Brooksby's Walk. In the 1990s, I used to live a stone's throw away from this location, when it used to be a yellow-painted Islamic bookshop. It lies within view of the Homerton University Hospital's VD annex. In spring of 2006, the shop was asking readers of the Islamist forum "Ummah.com" for donations.

In August 2006, the youngest of the suspects to be arrested in connection with the alleged air-terror plot was aged 17. He was indicted for the following: "On a day between 1 October 2005 and 10 August 2006 within the jurisdiction of the Central Criminal Court had in his possession a document or record, namely a book on improvised explosives devices, some suicide notes and wills with the identities of persons prepared to commit acts of terrorism and a map of Afghanistan containing information likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism (contrary to Section 58 (1) (b) of the Terrorism Act 2000)."

This young suspect went on trial in the Fall of 2007. On Friday, October 26, 2007, he was sentenced to six months in jail. His name is Abdul Muneem Patel. He was freed early from Glen Parva jail on January 7.

Abdul Muneem Patel's father – Mohammed Patel – runs the Islamic Medical Association charity shop in Chatsworth Road. During the recent trial that saw Abdulla Ahmed Ali, Assad Sarwar and Tanvir Hussain found guilty of conspiracy to murder, Mohammed Patel was mentioned. According to the Press Association, the prosecution "unmasked Afghan war veteran Patel as an extremist sympathiser who used his contacts to smooth the path for Ali and others."

It is of no small interest that this particular location in Chatsworth Road is mentioned in a terror trial. In the mid-1990s, it was formed as an Islamic bookshop - the al-Koran. The bookshop's founder was Mohammed Hamid. This individual also ran an Islamic bookstall on busy Oxford Street in London's West End. Mohammed Hamid called himself "Osama bin London." Hamid was also involved with assisting at the Islamic Medical Association store in Chatsworth Road. He had taken seven containers to Afghanistan in early 2002. On Tuesday February 26, 2008, 50-year-old Hamid was found guilty on three counts of "soliciting to murder" and three counts of providing terrorist training in Britain. On Friday March 7, 2008, Hamid was sentenced to an "indefinite" jail term, of not less than seven and a half years.

Assisting Hamid to run the stall in London's West End was Muktar Ibrahim, who led the cell that attempted to commit suicide bombings in London on July 21, 2005. Ibrahim was photographed with the other 21/7 cell members at a training camp in the Lake District of northern England on May 3, 2004. This camp had been organized by Mohammed Hamid.

Eritrean-born Ibrahim, who was convicted on July 10, 2007 and jailed for life, also knew Abdulla Ahmed Ali. Ibrahim had been in Pakistan between December 2004 and March 2005. Ahmed Ali had been in Pakistan from August 2004 until January 2005. According to journalist Richard Watson on BBC's Newsnight on September 8, 2008, "Ahmed Ali was in phone contact with Muktar Ibrahim out there (in Pakistan)."

Mohammed Sidique Khan, leader of the 7/7 cell, had gone to Pakistan with his fellow-suicide bomber, Shehzad Tanweer, on November 19, 2004, returning on February 8, 2005. There is no evidence of Mohammed SIdique Khan being directly involved with Abdulla Ahmed Ali, but he and Tanweer certainly knew the main figures in the Operation Crevice plot. The Crevice cell planned to use liquid fertilizer to carry out bomb attacks in Britain. Members of the Crevice cell had spent time in terror training camps in Pakistan.

There appear to be extensive links between British-based Jihadists, and for many of these, Pakistan is a place where they receive training in explosives manufacture. Richard Watson stated: "We found out that the man who drove the burning Jeep into Glasgow airport – Kafeel Ahmed – last year, he has a connection with a man called Abbas Boutrab, a convicted terrorist, an Algerian terrorist, who was under surveillance in Northern Ireland in 2003."

There are other links connecting some of these extremists. Kafeel Ahmed later died of burns he had sustained in his attack on Glasgow airport on June 30, 2007. In his native Bangalore in India, Kafeel Ahmed was linked to a proselytizing group called Tablighi Jamaat.

Richard Reid, the British terrorist who tried to blow up a Miami-bound plane with a bomb hidden in his shoe, was involved with Tablighi Jamaat. Three of the 7/7 bombers, including leader Mohammed Sidique Khan, had attended the Markazi mosque at Savile Town in Dewsbury. This mosque is the headquarters of Tablighi Jamaat in Britain, built in 1980 with Saudi financial assistance.

Assad Sarwar, one of the three men convicted of conspiracy to murder on Monday, September 8^th, was also involved in Tablighi Jamaat. His brother said: "He was at Tablighi Jamaat, which is a sect in Islam which encourages the youth to grow beards, pray five times a day; and how the prophet lived on a daily basis. He thought religion is more important than study."

One of the men convicted at the same trial of conspiracy to "cause a public nuisance" and who will be re-tried for plotting to cause explosions on board planes is Waheed Zaman. He frequently attended Tablighi Jamaat meetings near his home in Walthamstow.

Muktar Ibrahim, who was in direct phone contact with Abdulla Ahmed ALi, also attended a Tablighi mosque in east London. The fifth member of the 21/7 cell, Manfo Asiedu, also had involvement with Tablighi. This organization is ideologically linked to the extremism of the Deobandis, and it should be remembered that the Taliban leadership were graduates from Deoband madrassas. In May 2006 when Tablighi Jamaat held a convention in Waziristan, Pakistan, the local Taliban ordered a ceasefire to give attendees safe passage.

In Newham in London, Tablighi Jamaat have been attempting to build a "mega-mosque" near the site of the 2012 Olympics. In France, Tablighi Jamaat have been responsible for radicalizing Muslim prisoners, causing French intelligence officials to call it the "antechamber of fundamentalism". Michael Heimbach of the FBI has said: "We have a significant presence of Tablighi Jamaat in the United States and we have found that al-Qaeda used them for recruiting now and in the past."

Journalist Patrick Johnston argued that it was "enough" that hundreds of lives had not been lost – the obvious consequence if a plane-bombing campaign had been brought to fruition. In the short-term this may be true. But Britain has allowed preachers and young radicals to act with impunity for two decades. Muslims from Al Muhajiroun and other groups have preached the legitimacy of hatred and murder. Many of those individuals, such as Abu Izzadeen, are now in jail. But their sermons of hate have influenced others. Some of the Crevice plotters were Al Muhajiroun members, and the group is linked to the 2003 suicide bombing in Mike's Bar in Tel-Aviv, in which 3 innocent people were killed.

Islamist terror plots have sprung up like mushrooms from the compost originally laid down by the godfathers of British Jihad – Abu Hamza, Omar Bakri Mohammed, Abdullah el-Faisal. Their words inspired the second generation of British jihadists and already a third generation of would-be terrorists is emerging. Tolerance of intolerance has got Britain nowhere in the fight against extremism. So-called "moderate leaders" have spun tissues of lies to mislead and distract the authorities away from dealing with the Islamist danger in British society. From Islamist ideology terrorism naturally evolves. For that reason, a retrial is essential, if only to send a tough message to those who may be on the verge of adopting radicalism.

FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Adrian Morgan is a British based writer and artist who has written for Western Resistance since its inception. He also writes for Spero News. He has previously contributed to various publications, including the Guardian and New Scientist and is a former Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Society. Feedback: editorialdirector@familysecuritymatters.org.

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