Western Resistance

« King John, Sharia and England | | Spain: Twenty Islamists Convicted »

February 26, 2008

Britain's Muslim Terror Trainers Guilty

On Tuesday February 26, after a trial lasting more than four months, it was announced that five men were found guilty of partaking in terror training on UK soil. The leader of the group, Mohammed Hamid, called himself "Osama bin London". Before his arrest, Hamid had boasted to his followers that he had been organizing terror training camps in Britain for thirteen years.

Hamid was found guilty by a jury at Woolwich Crown Court of three counts of "soliciting to murder" and three counts of providing terrorist training. He was found not guilty on two other counts of soliciting murder and not guilty of providing training in weaponry. He was also found not guilty of possessing a document containing information useful to a terrorist.

Four others had been on trial with him. After 22 days of deliberation, a jury found three of these individuals - Kibley Da Costa, Muhammad al-Figari and Kader Ahmed guilty of attending terror training camps in Britain. 41-year old property developer Mousa Brown was found not guilty, and was freed from custody.

Reporting restrictions were lifted when the sentences were announced. It was then revealed that two of Osama bin London's followers, Muhammad Kyriacou, 19, and Yassin Mutegombwa, 23, had pleaded guilty on Tuesday to attending the training camps at a separate hearing. Under Section 6 (1) of the Terrorism Act 2006, receiving training in terrorism is illegal. Kyriacou and Mutegombwa, who both came from south London, were both given a three year and five month jail sentence. Mutegombwa's 18-year old brother Hassan had been convicted at an earlier trial of seeking funds for terrorism training overseas while at one of the camps run by "Osama bin London", and had been given a 10-year jail sentence.

45-year old Muhammad al-Figari from Tottenham, north-east London, was found guilty of two counts of partaking in terrorist training camps and two counts of possession of a record containing information likely to be useful to a terrorist. He has found not guilty of a third count of containing such a record. Figari had been born in Trinidad as Roger Michael Figari. He came to London in 1989. He worked as a chauffeur for the BBC, and later became a convicted drug smuggler. He also had convictions for theft and assault.

Somali- born Kader Ahmed of Plaistow, East London, had been found guilty on Wednesday, February 20, 2008 of two counts of attending terror training camps, and was cleared of another similar count. Kader Ahmed had been 17 when arrested. During the trial he said that an undercover officer who had infiltrated the group was "James Bond" and said he had invented his evidence.

24-year old Kibley da Costa from West Norwood in south London was found guilty of providing terror training, guilty of two counts of attending terrorist training sessions and one count of having a document containing information useful to a terrorist. He was given a jail sentence of four years and eleven months. He had been born in Jamaica to a Christian family and had arrived in Britain in 1995. He had worked as a bus driver, though this employment ended after he had run over a drunken man, who later died.

The trial of Mohammed Hamid aka Osama bin London had started on Monday October 10, 2007. On the same day, his accomplice Attila Ahmet had pleaded guilty to three counts of soliciting to murder. Ahmed, aka "Abu Abdullah" had been a close associate of Abu Hamza al-Masri, the firebrand preacher at Finsbury Park Mosque. When Hamza was arrested and placed in custody in 2004, Attila Ahmet had continued to preach at the Finsbury Park Mosque, and in the streets outside when the mosque trustees had prevented their access. He and his followers finally lost control of the mosque on February 8, 2005, when the trustees, accompanied by police, changed the locks on the doors.

Attila Ahmet, Muhammad Al-Figari, Yassin Mutegombwa and (now cleared) Moussa Brown were arrested in London raids that began on September 1, 2006.

Mohammed Hamid, Attila Ahmet, Mohammed al-Figari and Kader Ahmed will be given sentences at a later date. Attila Ahmet has other charges which are to remain on file.

Osama bin London

Mohammed Hamid was born in 1957 in Tanzania to Muslim parents who had come from India. Aged five, he came to Britain with his family, settling in the town of Heckmondwike and later Batley in West Yorkshire. He came to London while only 12, moving into a home with his elder brother. Here he became involved in crime and drugs. His first offense was for stealing fish fingers and a tin of sweetcorn from a shop. He gained convictions for robbery, burglary and cannabis possession, and at aged 19 he was in borstal (a young offenders' prison). He eventually became addicted to crack cocaine.

In 2001 he was even questioned about possible involvement in a kidnapping incident.

He told the court of his crack addiction. "I became very addicted. I could not keep my life together. I had to [send] my daughter and my son away from the house. There was not even a spoon left in the house because I sold everything to keep my habit, my addiction. I just had one blanket and that was it. I was living like a squatter, like a tramp."

He claimed to have found his spiritual salvation on a trip to a mosque with his brother, but it appears he became radicalized on a trip to India. It was here he met his second wife, who moved back with him to London, living with him in a house in Almack Road in Hackney, east London.

With four children by her, bringing the total of his offspring to six, he opened the al-Koran bookshop at the Homerton end of Chatsworth Road in Hackney around 1996. He also worked as a volunteer youth worker, and on Sundays trained a young soccer team. After 9/11 he began preaching at Speaker's Corner in Hyde Park.

He spent three months in Pakistan from January to March 2002. He had brought hospital equipment, and had gone into North-West Frontier Province, where he visited camps for Afghan refugees in Chaman.

In 2003 at Speaker's Corner, he met the four men who would later carry out the failed bombings on London Transport on July 21, 2005 - Muktar Ibrahim, Ramzi Mohammed, Yassin Omar and Hussain Osman. Hamid, like most of the 21/7 bombers, attended the Finsbury Park Mosque at the time when its leadership passed from hook-handed Abu Hamza to his deputy Abu Abdullah (Attila Ahmet).

Hamid and Muktar Ibrahim set up an Islamic bookstall in Oxford Street in London's West End. Muktar would go on to become the leader or "emir" of the July 21 cell. On May 3, 2004, Muktar Ibrahim, Ramzi Mohammed, Yassin Omar, Hussain Osman and another of the cell's associates, Adel Yahya, were photographed attending a terror training camp in the Lake District in northern England. This camp was one of the training camps organized by Mohammed Hamid.

In October 2004, Eritrean-born Muktar Ibrahim and Hamid were arrested at their Oxford Street bookstall for breach of the peace. When Hamid was arrested at this time, he told police officers that he was called "Osama bin London". He also said: "I've got a bomb and I'm going to blow you all up'."

Ibrahim had fled from the scene and may have escaped, had a passer-by not tripped him up. Ibrahim was due to attend Horseferry Road Magistrates Court. Muktar Ibrahim did not show up as he had gone to Pakistan. It was in Pakistan that he had learned how to make explosives.

Ibrahim did not reappear in front of police until after he had tried to detonate an explosive-filled rucksack on a Number 26 bus on July 21, 2005. Hamid had exchanged 155 calls and SMS messages to the four 21/7 bombers. He used the alias "Al-Quran" in these calls. On the evening of July 7, when four Muslim bombers had killed 52 people on London Transport, Hamid had written a message to Ethiopian-born, Hussain Osman who would later try to blow up a tube train carriage on 21/7. The message read: "Assalam bro, we fear no-one except ALLAH, we will not change our ways, we are proud to be a Muslim an we will not hide. 8pm Friday at my place, be there food and talk, AL-QURAN."

Hamid would hold frequent meetings at his home in Clapton. It was here that he would hold Friday evening prayers. Often, these meetings were co-run by Attila Ahmet. Hamid had interested police since his 2004 arrrest. In September 2005, MI5, Britain's homeland intelligence agency, managed to secrete a surveillance bug inside Hamid's home. This was to provide valuable information which was used in the trial.

On June 16 2006, Hamid was recorded telling his house-guests that they were "soldiers of Allah" who were "fighting for sharia law." He said: "The whole aspect is for you to get shahada [martyred] for you to be shaheed [martyr]."

An undercover officer from Special Branch was chosen to infiltrate the group. This individual met Hamid at his Oxford Street bookstall on April 6, 2006. Here he pretended to be a Christian, and was "converted" over a period of half an hour by Hamid.

Hamid told him that mobile phones, DNA and the Iraq War had been predicted in the Koran. Hamid gave the undercover police officer a new name - "Dawood". The officer would come to Hamid's home in Clapton to attend his meetings. Dawood would also go with Hamid on one of his terror training exercises in the New Forest in Hampshire, and also he attended a paintballing exercise at White Waltham in Berkshire.

Bizarrely, while Mohammed Hamid was radicalizing young Muslims, the BBC used him as a poster boy for "moderate Islam". He was filmed at his Oxford Street bookstall doing his da'wah activities, and was even shown with other individuals, including some of those now found guilty, attending a paintballing exercise. The BBC aired the finished result as a documentary called "Don't Panic I'm Islamic" on June 12, 2005, less than a month before the 7/7 attacks.

A researcher for this documentary, Nasreen Suleaman, told Woolwich Crown Court that after the failed bombings of July 2005, Hamid had contacted her. He told her of his associations with the bombers. She said she had no feeling of obligation to inform the police of this. Suleaman claimed she had told senior managers at the BBC but had been told not to report the information to police.

The BBC had actually paid Hamid and convicted terror trainer Mohammed al-Figari to attend a paintballing exercise at Delta Force, a center in Tonbridge in Kent. After shooting each other with paint pellets, the group was shown engaged in prayer. This event took place in February 2005. Merely for appearing in the documentary, the BBC paid Hamid £300 ($596).

Nasreen Suleaman had told the court: "There are many, many British Muslims that I know who for the past 15 or 20 years have been going paintballing. It's a harmless enough activity. I don't think there is any suggestion, or ever has been, that it's a terrorist training activity."

Suleaman thought that paintballing would be a "fun" way of introducing Hamid. She is either ignorant or dishonest. Paintball activities have been used to secure convictions of members of the "Virginia Jihad" group, led by Ali al-Timini. This group had links with Pakistani and Kashmir-based terrorist entity Lashkar-e-Tayba. Paintballing exercises are additionally used as recruitment aids by Hizb ut-Tahrir.

Hamid's recorded conversations were to be incriminating. During a trip to the Jameah Islamic School near Crowborough where Hamid ran another training camp, "Dawood" recorded Hamid discussing the bombings of July 7, 2005 with Attila Ahmet.

Hamid said: "You know what happened on the tubes, right, how many altogether, four people shaheed [martyred]. Allah wa Allah I have to say this is as well, but four people got shaheed, right, how many people did they take out?"

When told "Fifty two" he replied: "Fifty two, that's not even a breakfast for me"

Ahmet responded: "I know it's not." Hamid continued: "That's not even a breakfast for me, for me in this country, do you understand me? Now, at the same time, how I look at it, I would take my breakfast and I still be with my children and my wife and I'll be looking after them. Remember the Jack the Ripper? Remember this people that never get caught, right, don't let your ego go forward, let your intelligence go forward for the sake of Allah, use your hikma [wisdom] and be effective, effective, see how many gets it, see how many you can take at the same time, see how long you can last out, then if you have to go, then you're going for a good reason."

In another recorded speech, Hamid said: "As they wage war in our lands, you know it's halal [permissible] for you to do it here. You cannot say 'yeah but brother, I didn't come from that land.' That's your family that's being put to the sword, that's your family's honour that being put to the sword. That's Allah's honour being disgraced."

Hamid ran terror camps in the Lake district, Saint Albans, Berkshire and also in a wooded area near Lyndhurst in Hampshire. In December 2004, he had also taken Kader Ahmed on a minibus trip to Loch Ness in Scotland. The Lyndhurst camps took place from April 28 to May 1, 2006, and again on June 2 to June 4, 2006. Training also took place in the grounds of the Jameah Islamiyah school in Sussex. This building, with more than 100 rooms, had become an Islamic school in September 2003, though by 2005 an inspection showed that only nine pupils were registered. The school had also been connected with reports of abuse of students. Abu Hamza tried to purchase this building in the late 1990s.

At one of Hamid's camps in Great Langdale in the Lake District, police had seen groups of men engaged in strange activities on two weekends in May 2004. MI5 were called to investigate. An agent called 1259 gave evidence to the trial in October last year. He testified that: "There were about 10 males leopard crawling - moving low and flat along the ground. They were doing press-ups and sit-ups - hard physical activity - and there was an anti-ambush drill, reacting to effective enemy fire." Hamid was found not guilty of organising weapons training at this camp.

Abu Hamza had visited Jameah Islamiyah building five times. He was also said to have set up camps in the 58 acres of the school grounds. Additionally, Hamza had considered buying sites for terror training in Wales and Lancashire before (allegedly) choosing instead to establish a training camp in Bly, Oregon.

Four of the individuals who were arrested in September 2006 at the same time as Attila Ahmet and Mohammed Hamid were said by the Spanish Interior Ministry to have been suspected of participating in terrorist training in North Africa in the spring of 2004. The ministry said that one individual, whose initials are "M.H." had been born in Tanzania in 1957. This is almost certainly Mohammed Hamid.

Attila Ahmet

Born in London in 1964 to Turkish Cypriot parents, Attila Ahmet had been a soccer coach. He trained youth teams, the Sydenham Boys, Athenlay, and Fisher Athletic. He was nicknamed "Attila the Hun" at this time, even though he was not a radical Muslim then. He became a radical around 1998.

Brian Miller, chairman of the Bexley League, said: "He was a nutter, very volatile and took it far too seriously. Once I had to referee the managers - not the game."

On October 14, 2004, Ahmet had given an interview to American TV channel PBS. He said: "Allah mentioned jihad in the Quran 26 times, and Allah mentioned quital 79 times. Quital is fighting by a physical fighting -- 79 times... People see us as extremists because we don't compromise the religion of Allah. We accept it with every word and every utterance of our beloved prophet Muhammad, that no Muslim can turn away from one ayah of the Quran, one verse of the Quran. If we don't accept this, we actually become disbelievers."

He expressed his contempt for British Islamic representatives at the Muslim Council of Britain, and said they were heretics: "They have invented their own religion and [are] brainwashing the ignorant Muslim that doesn't fully understand the Quran. And this is how they're going, with the support of Tony Blair, to turn fellow Muslims against me or against the likes of Osama bin Laden and etc. and etc. and etc. The ultimate thing is that they're turning them away from the prophet, peace be upon him."

At Finsbury Park Mosque, Attila Ahmet would call non-Muslims "filthy disbelievers".

Ahmet would sometimes lead the talks at Mohammed Hamid's home, and he also took part in terror training sessions. At a speech he made in Hamid's home in Almack Road on March 31, 2006, Ahmet said: "The kuffar today, what do they do? When the mujahideen hid and a handful... trapped 500 filthy American soldiers, what did they do? You know, 'We need cover, cover cover.' So they sent in their aeroplanes and bombed the brothers."

"Allah says they are cowards. It's an obligation for Allah to fulfil jihad. Allah says it is quite easy for him to punish the kuffar... but Allah says 'No, I've left you to fulfil that duty if you really believe it.'"

On another occasion he made reference to Abu Hamza and also Abdullah el-Faisal (both of these preachers were jailed for soliciting murder). Ahmet said: "So what do we do then, are we still accepting this or are we going to make change, what is it we're scared of, better to go to prison or die or whatever than staying on..."

"It's like Sheikh Faisal said, Sheikh Abu Hamza said, I'm trying to spoon feed it to you, you know the trust, act upon it. Like the brother said, we need to start encouraging each other and stop making it a mockery of Islam."

In one recorded speech Ahmet said: "Allah said he loves those that fight with their lives and their wealth and their family's wealth as well in his cause. So this is what we were talking about - why are we scared to meet our death?"

He boasted that he was the "number one Al-Qaeda in Europe" and said he would attack anyone who was considered an enemy of Muslims. The court heard a recording where he returned to the subject of the MCB. He said: "In reality these people need to be taken out."

Hamid and Ahmet also discussed the shedding of blood as a means to implement Sharia. The Houses of Parliament were mentioned as a possible target by Ahmet who said: "The House of Parliament, the big people, the MPs, the police, the army, the city slickers are all halal [permitted]."

The court also heard how, at a training session in the grounds of the Jameah Islamiyah school, Attila Ahmet had sang a version of Harry Bellafonte's calypso tune, the Banana Boat Song.

The lyrics used by Ahmet were: "Come mister Taliban, come bomb England, before the daylight come, you wanna see 10 Downing Street done. Come mister Taliban, come implement sharia. Come mister Taliban, come bomb England, before the daylight come, Inshallah it will be done."

Ahmet's early plea of "guilty" to three counts of soliciting murder may have happened as he was finding prison life inside Belmarsh jail to be harsh. The Guardian states that after only a few hours of interrogation at the high-security Paddington Green police station, where he was taken after his arrest, he had panic attacks. These appeared to be induced by claustrophobia.

Inside Belmarsh, he was apparently paranoid, and accused fellow defendants of being spies for MI5. Other defendants said that he was "cracking up" inside Belmarsh jail, and claimed he had pleaded guilty in an attempt to be freed early from prison.

Peter Clarke, assistant commissioner for specialist (terror) operations at London's Metropolitan Police said: "Hamid and Ahmet are dangerous people who between them carried out the recruitment, grooming and terrorist training of young men."

Though neither of these men were accused of directly assisting the 21/7 bombers to plot their attacks, it appears certain that they had contributed substantially to their radicalisation.

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at February 26, 2008 11:31 PM

Comments

Posted by: seeteufel at February 27, 2008 2:57 PM

Posted by: Giraldus Cambrensis at February 27, 2008 7:24 PM

Posted by: Sir Henry Morgan at March 2, 2008 8:53 AM

Posted by: Sir Henry Morgan at March 2, 2008 8:55 AM

Post a comment