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February 5, 2007

UK: Islamist Preacher Called For Beheadings

So far, the ITV News website has not provided details of this story. However on the 6.30 pm ITV news, footage of radical Abu Izzadeen, taken in Regents Park Mosque (London Central Mosque) two years ago, in 2004, was broadcast. Here the Islamist, wearing a white shawl over his head, was saying that anyone who fought as a soldier deserved to die, by having his head taken from his shoulders.

This footage raises two very serious questions. Firstly, what on earth is someone as extreme as Izzadeen, a former Al-Muhajiroun member, doing preaching in Regents Park Mosque? This mosque, built with Saudi donations, featured in a documentary by Channel 4's Dispatches, an investigation broadcast on January 15. This mosque prides itself on being "mainstream", but Dispatches had revealed that the mosque bookshop was supplying jihadist videos.

Saudi-born Dr Ahmed al-Dubayan is the director of the mosque, and he told the Dispatches producers: "It is false and misleading to make the sweeping generalization that the teachings from Saudi Arabia promote extremism, and it is also false to assert that the ICC (Islamic Cultural Center) is dominated by the influence of such teachings."

Abu Izzadeen has been notorious as a trouble-making radical since his involvement with Al-Muhajiroun, and the mosque authorities would, or should, have regarded him as a liability to the image of "moderation" the mosque attempts to project. Izzadeen was born Trevor Brooks in Hackney, London, before changing his first name to Omar, and ultimately renaming himself altogether.

On September 20 last year, he heckled Home Secretary John Reid, claiming that a politician had no right to enter a "Muslim neighborhood". He recently said at a meeting: "We are the Muslims. We drink the blood of the enemy, and we can face them anywhere. That is Islam and that is jihad."

Immediately after 7/7, Izzadeen was recorded by Richard Watson on BBC's Newsnight praising Osama bin Laden and saying that Britain will become a sharia state.

ITV were not specifying exactly when this latest video footage was taken at Regents Park Mosque. Izzadeen's mentor is Omar Bakri Mohammed, who was banned from returning to Britain in August 2005, shortly after the Newsnight documentary was aired, and after an expose by the Sunday Times' Focus team.

Last week, nine Muslims were arrested in Birmingham on Wednesday, suspected of engaging in a plot to kidnap a British Muslim soldier, who would videotaped while tortured and ultimately beheaded, with the footage to be disseminated on the internet via jihadist websites.

Last summer, the Islamist leader Omar Bakri Mohammed (who lived in Britain from 1985 until August 2005) said from his base in Lebanon that Islamists should kidnap a British soldier in Iraq or Afghanistan, according to the Daily Mail.

Bakri is still actively campaigning on the internet to indoctrinate his followers. Izzadeen was involved in the group AL Ghuraaba, which in July 2006 celebrated on its website the death of a British Muslim soldier. 24-year old Lance Corporal Jabron Hashmi was the first British Muslim to be killed in Afghanistan. Also last year, as shown on the Channel 4 Dispatches documentary, a visiting preacher said at Birmingham's Sparkbrook mosque that Lance Corporal Hashmi deserved to die.

The imam had said in 2006: "There was an individual who was killed in Afghanistan recently. A Muslim name, he came from a Pakistani family. Do you know what they had written in a tabloid newspaper? 'Hero of Islam'. 'Hero of Islam' who went into Muslim Afghanistan to kill Muslims. Why? Because their crime is implementing Islam. The 'Hero of Islam' is the one who separated his head from his shoulders."

The footage broadcast this evening on ITV, the language of Al Ghuraaba and Omar Bakri Mohammed, with an ultimate result of such a plot being attempted, all show a remarkable similarity. It seems that these radical preachers are the ones who are "putting ideas" into the heads of radical Muslim youth.

The actual beheading plot had focused on one specific target, who was placed under police protective supervision. However, the individual, who lived near Birmingham, had been chosen from a "hit list" of 25 individuals who were British Muslims employed as soldiers, living from the West Country to Glasgow.

How the names and addresses fell into the hands of the plotters, who were watched for six months under a surveillance exercise called Operation Gamble, has raised questions. There have been suggestions that there is an Islamist "mole" within the Ministry of Defense. On Friday, senior defense officials had a meeting to discuss whether to enhance the security for the 330 Muslims serving in the armed forces.

UPDATE:

Finally, ITV does provide a mention on its website. The video was found on a password-protected website, uncovered by the independent monitoring group Vigil. The words spoken by Izzadeen in the video, interspersed with a few Arabic phrases, are: "Whoever allies himself with the Kaffirs (non-believers) against the believers - he is one of them. So those so-called enemies to Allah who join the British Government - 'cos remember the British Government, my dear Muslim brothers, are crusaders... crusaders come to kill and rape Muslims. Whoever joins them - he who joins the British Army, the American Army, he is a mortal kaffir and his only hukum (punishment) is for his head to be removed. Indeed, whoever changes his deen (Muslim code of life); kill him."

The aired version of the news showed the responses of a barrister Gavin Millar, who watched the video footage. Millar claimed that thee was enough material on the video to merit Abu Izzadeen being jailed, like Abu Hamza (who was convicted of soliciting to murder and sentenced to 7 years' jail on February 7, 2006).

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at February 5, 2007 2:43 PM

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