Source: www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200102/cmhansrd/vo011016/debtext/11016-15.htm
Mr. Andrew Dismore (Hendon): I wish to address the concerns that many of my constituents, not least those from the Muslim community, have raised with me about the activities of the fundamentalist extremists in London who have sinister international links and provide support, aid and comfort to the Taliban and bin Laden. I first raised those concerns in parliamentary questions in January and May last year, and I am pleased that some action at least has been taken in respect of several of those involved, but others remain at large.
I shall begin with Sakina Security Services, which was raided a couple of weeks ago. Sakina is an Islamist security organisation with extremely close links to al-Muhajiroun and Supporters of Sharia. Sakina sends people overseas for jihad training with live arms and ammunition. It is hostile to the British Government, police and security services, and regularly issues threats to British interests in the United Kingdom and overseas. It is also particularly anti-semitic and appears to have singled out the Jewish community as its direct adversary.
In October 2000, Sakina launched an appeal for donations to the Al Aqsa Liberation Fund to raise money to support the Palestinian jihad. The bank account was
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held with the Woolwich and was also used to solicit donations for the Taliban. I am pleased to say that that bank account has now been closed. Sakina also had a website on which it advertised training courses, the most impressive—if that is the right word—of which was called "The Ultimate Jihad Challenge". Sakina advertised a two-week course in the United States and emphasised practical live-fire training, using 2,000 to 3,000 rounds of mixed-calibre ammunition. The website said that students would be taught,
"live fire engaging multiple targets; live fire concealed carry; combat jungle run; live fire sniper; live fire shooting at, through and from vehicles"
and many other terrorist skills.
Sakina also organises training in many different sites in the United Kingdom. However, its activities are not limited to that. A bulletin board posted on its website a year ago today claimed that Sakina operatives were in
"occupied Palestine, sisterly Lebanon and in Jordan"
ready to fight in the Palestinian jihad. Although the police have acted, I regret that the Department of Trade and Industry has done nothing to close the company. So far, only one Sakina associate, Sulayman Bilal Zain-ul Abidin—also known as Frank Etim—has been arrested and charged with offences under the Terrorism Act 2000.
The al-Muhajiroun organisation is inextricably linked with Sakina. It was founded by Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed who was given indefinite leave to remain in the UK in 1993. It is also linked to Supporters of Sharia, founded by Abu Hamza who was given UK nationality in 1986. Al-Muhajiroun is dedicated to establishing a Muslim state in Britain. Bakri is openly contemptuous of Britain and the very idea of democracy. He told the Daily Mail on 17 September,
"My job is to speak about Islam. I don't agree with manmade laws. In Britain I engage in opposition to manmade laws and expose the weaknesses of manmade laws. I don't believe in democracy or dictatorship, they are both manmade. They are the two faces of the same coin."
For years al-Muhajiroun has been engaged in training and recruiting young Muslims and is now banned from university campuses. It has engaged in fundraising for terrorist causes, including Hamas and Hezbollah, and has organised violent demonstrations against the Jewish community and the United States. Some of its supporters have been jailed for violent attacks.
In an interview with the Arabic newspaper al-Sharq al-Aswat, Bakri Mohammed boasted that al-Muhajiroun sent Muslim youths on jihad training courses in Virginia, Michigan and the Missouri desert where they learned various techniques for guerrilla warfare, for making explosives and using shoulder-mounted missiles. He stated that between 300 and 400 people were sent on such courses each year, travelling as Europeans on British, French and German passports so that they did not need entry visas for the United States although most were of Asian or Arab origin. The training was organised by a British security firm that is managed by a Muhajiroun member. I believe that to be Sakina Security Services and the Muhajiroun member to be Mohammed Jameel.
In the same article, Bakri Mohammed said that financial contributions to cover the costs were regarded as a grant that the youths had to pay back after their return
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by working part time in the Muhajiroun's jihad and call networks which recruit Muslim youths to prepare them militarily. He was asked to name the countries that the youths went to and said that after completing military training
"some went to Kashmir, and others to Chechnya and to Kosovo before that. Some remained in Britain because they were not fully trained ideologically."
More recently, on 21 September, Bakri told supporters outside the Pakistan High Commission that his brother had left to fight in Afghanistan. He said:
"Like me he has received training in Texas and in the north of Scotland where he undertook a one-year course in weapons and evasive vehicle manoeuvring."
On 30 September Omar Bakri Mohammed told activists in Birmingham that they
"had an obligation to help and support Afghanistan and to fight with them."
An additional close link is provided through Mohammed Jameel, one of the organisers of Sakina. He is still at large and has made speeches at many al-Muhajiroun public meetings at which he has been billed as
"co-ordinator of Sakina Security and member of al-Muhajiroun."
In an article for Al-Wassat, another Arabic newspaper, entitled, "Yes, we have camps for the training of the mujahidin", Jameel revealed that Sakina has trained more than 150 youths. He also revealed that it trains Supporters of Sharia members at the Finsbury Park mosque. In the same article, Bakri Mohammed revealed that young men had been sent to camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Abu Yaya is another operative of Sakina. On 26 June 2000 he gave an interview on the "Today" programme on Radio 4 in which he explained that he had just returned from Kashmir having spent four months on military training where he learned everything necessary, including making bombs, using artillery and a Kalashnikov and how to mount an ambush. He cropped up after 11 September as a spokesperson for al-Muhajiroun. On 24 September he said that he had
"a divine obligation to join his brothers and sisters. My allegiance is to Islam, not to Queen or country—if I have to shoot British soldiers, then so be it . . . There is no law in the UK that can stop us going. I have already had military training, I know the area and I am ready to return to Afghanistan."
There are many similar quotes from other al-Muhajiroun activists. Omar Brooks, speaking to a newspaper on 16 September, said:
"There are a sizeable number of Moslems undergoing military training in the UK . . . If America decides to bomb Afghanistan, then we'll wake up. If they're going to attack Afghanistan then what's my duty? It's going to be a new chapter."
Zahir Khan told a meeting in Birmingham on 17 September:
"If Britain helped attack Afghanistan, it would be allowable for Moslems to attack military targets in Britain."
Shah Jalal Hussain, another al-Muhajiroun activist, spoke on 19 December of how he and many of his friends who are British Muslims believe that Whitehall and Downing street are "legitimate targets" if Britain helps the US in any strike. Those are not simply the words of hotheads. Those people have had serious military training and they pose a threat that must be taken seriously.
Abu Hamza al-Masri is widely known as one of the people behind the Finsbury Park mosque. In 1997 he ran Al-Ansar, an Arabic newspaper that supported the
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Algerian Armed Islamic Group—GIA. The newspaper was originally established by Rachid Ramda, an Algerian who arrived in the UK in 1992 and is accused by France of organising and funding a series of terrorist bombings in France in 1995. He is still fighting his extradition to France.
Abu Hamza closed Al-Ansar in 1997 and in its place launched the Supporters of Sharia, another serious organisation. In 1999, eight British Muslims were convicted in Yemen of plotting terrorist attacks. The Yemenis accused Abu Hamza of organising the plot in conjunction with Islamic terrorists in Yemen. Abu Hamza also often acts as a mouthpiece for Yemen's main Islamic terrorist organisation, the Aden Abyan Islamic Army. When it kidnapped a group of tourists in 1998 its leader decided to announce the news first to Abu Hamza, whom he telephoned.
Recent reports reveal that Ahmed Beghal was a regular attender at the Finsbury Park mosque. He is the leader of a terrorist cell of Takfir wal-Hijra which planned terrorist attacks in Europe, including a suicide bombing of the US embassy in Paris. Beghal lived in London during the late 1990s and was part of a clique of Takfir wal-Hijra supporters, who are still active at the mosque. In July this year he was arrested in Dubai.
Abu Hamza has used his position at the mosque to promote a message of violent and radical extremism. In two speeches at mosques in Burnley, which were broadcast in the "Dispatches" programme on Channel 4, he said:
"Get training . . . What are you training for? So you can get the kufr"—
the non-believer—
"and crush his head in your arms, so you can wring his throat, so you can rip his intestines out . . . Forget wasting a bullet on them—cut them in half . . . if you could put a balaclava on your face and walk down the road and stick one on somebody then do it. As long as you're going to get away with it."
He has incited people to attack Jewish causes, with which he identifies the "Zionists of the west", America and Britain. He incites, provokes and propagates hatred and the killing of the enemies of Islam.
In October 2000 Supporters of Sharia, al-Muhajiroun and the Islamic Observation Centre, led by the Egyptian terrorist Yasser al-Sirri, held a demonstration outside the Egyptian embassy. Abu Hamza implored his supporters to donate money
"to somebody who you know will use it to blow up these Jews, to blow up these Israelis".
Abu Hamza has his own theory about what happened on 11 September. He does not accept that the twin towers were demolished by aircraft: he believes that it was a Zionist plot and that the towers had been stuffed full of explosives. That might be laughable, but his comments have to be taken seriously. It may not be a coincidence that on Saturday night before last the Finsbury Park synagogue was virtually destroyed in an arson attack.
Yasser al-Sirri is wanted by Egypt because of a car bomb that killed a 12-year-old girl and injured scores of her classmates eight years ago. It was recently revealed that he is implicated in the recent suicide bomb murder of the Afghan opposition leader by helping two assassins posing as journalists to obtain Afghan visas. I believe that he is still at large.
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Abu Qatada is another person about whom we need to be extremely concerned. The USTreasury has recently named him as one of those whose assets have been frozen there, yet he remains at large in the UK. Abu Qatada, whose full name is Omar Mahmood Abu Omar, is a Palestinian-Jordanian who is closely associated with Jaish Mohammed, a proscribed organisation. In September 2000, he was convicted in his absence in Jordan for the millennium bomb plot. He is a close associate of Omar Bakri Mohammed and Abu Hamza al-Masri, and ran what was known as the Baker street mosque in Marylebone from a youth club, the Four Feathers club, which I believe recently moved to another address in the Harrow Road. One attendee of the youth club was shot dead at an Islamic school in Yemen.
Qatada has built a reputation for spreading extremism and division in the Muslim community in this country. In Brighton, he led a group of radicals who unseated the moderate imam of the mosque there. He has been to both Afghanistan and Bosnia, and been highly involved in many activities. Zacarias Moussaoui, the suspected 20th hijacker, regularly attended the Baker street mosque run by Abu Qatada, who has twice been convicted for his role in terrorist attacks in Jordan.
Surely it is time to take action against such extremists. The Crown Prosecution Service and the Director of Public Prosecutions have not adopted as aggressive an approach as they should have in dealing with these individuals. However, our laws must not permit companies, organisations or individuals to be used as fronts for terrorist fundraising or money laundering. We cannot permit the continuing organisation of package tours for trainee terrorists, on which they learn to kill with modern weapons and tactics. We must prevent the sending of youngsters to every troublespot around the world, where their lives are at risk or they threaten the lives of others, including British service personnel.
I am pleased that our race hate laws are to be strengthened to include religion, but in protecting our Muslim communities, that review must also deal with the incitement to violence and conspiracies of the extremists. There can be little doubt about what al-Muhajiroun, Supporters of Sharia, Bakri Mohammed, Abu Hamza and the rest are up to. They are bin Laden's fellow travellers. We must proscribe their organisations under the terrorism legislation.
As we review our asylum and immigration law, we must not just speed up extradition but respond to those who seek extradition of people such as Abu Qatada. The Home Secretary's powers to revoke indefinite leave to remain must be clarified and strengthened. It should be extended to the revocation of recently granted UK citizenship, so that those who abuse our democratic system and actively seek to destroy the society that protects them from the regimes that they would themselves impose on others can be removed if it is conducive to the public good and their own security to do so.
Appendix 2 Statement
ACCESS Statement HERE!
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