British terror trial traces a path to militant islam

Abu-Khadeejah Waheed, a trustee of a politically moderate Islamic bookstore down the street from the Centre for Islamic Studies, described the Egyptians, Syrians and Libyans who run it as an insular bunch who try to keep their activities secret. The Brotherhood, through its cells all over the world, has always nurtured the idea of achieving an Islamist global government based on the Koran and has spawned multitudes of clandestine militant groups, including Hamas, to use violent revolt to work toward that goal.

Waheed said the Center follows an ideology that traces more specifically to the deceased scholar Sayyid Qutb, an Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood leader who became a modern-day philosopher of using terror to achieve religious and political domination.

This school of thought is cited as the major influence on Osama bin Ladin. Counterterrorism experts in both the U. The Internet, some specialists say, now reigns as the single most powerful tool in the arsenal of Islamic extremist groups bent on taking their organizations and violent messages global.

Since , extremist web sites calling for violence have exploded from a handful to untold thousands that operate virtually unmolested by western governments. It has to be taken very seriously. Sajjan is not alone in saying government investigators, not only in the U. British laws that would allow authorities there to prosecute speech encouraging violent incitement are so porous, and thresholds for evidence so high, that authorities are unable to crack down, Sajjan said.

Aaron Weisburd, a Carbondale, Ill. He said many of these web sites are nestled on more plentiful, inexpensive American servers, where they recruit suicide bombers, raise funds for Jihad operations, grow their constituencies, pass along encrypted messages and attempt to establish legitimacy. The services Weisburd provides are needed, he said, because federal authorities either claim the First Amendment limits how they can combat the Internet incitement speech, or believe they should be kept online for surveillance purposes, despite a lack of evidence that such monitoring is effective.

In November, CBS first exposed the presence of radical Islamist web sites on another Dallas-area company that hosts web sites. The Planet Internet Services, Inc.

Federal authorities did not move to intervene, even though one site found on The Planet servers was playing fresh suicide bombing videos of American troops whose deaths were filmed in Iraq by the terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The sites were only removed after the news reports generated an angry public backlash, but have popped up elsewhere. Subscribing to my list will entitle subscribers to be alerted to blog posts, articles and writings as they are published, as well as any special announcements.

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Khyam testified in the Crevice trial in September. After enrolling in college in Britain, Mr. Meanwhile, in Luton, a town on the other side of London and another center of Al Muhajiroun recruitment, Mr.

Amin also heeded the call to jihad. His videotaped confessions to the police tell the story of his rejection of his Western way of life, his turn to prayer and the rules of Islam and his political radicalization. It was in a Luton prayer center that he first met some of the men accused of being Crevice conspirators, including Mr.

Khyam and a man accused of being a Qaeda operative, Abu Munthir, who was visiting from Pakistan. Videos showing the slaughter of Muslims in Chechnya and Bosnia jolted Mr. Amin sold his house in Luton and went to Pakistan in search of training with militants, according to his confessions. The prosecution argues that over the next three years, Mr. Amin, Mr. Khyam and their associates entered a hidden world of terrorism with tentacles on three continents.

Secrecy was maintained by using aliases and coded language. Cellphone conversations were avoided. Rather than using e-mail messages, communications were passed through Internet chats or by electronic messages stored for others to pick up later with passwords.

Computer hard drives and cellphone SIM cards were discarded and replaced often. Defense lawyers portray Mr. Babar as a fabricator and possibly an agent for the United States government. Babar during cross-examination last April. Babar acknowledged having lied when first questioned by the F. He pleaded guilty in New York in June to providing material support for terrorists, and he said in court that he was testifying against the Crevice suspects to reduce his sentence.

Yet during 17 days on the witness stand, Mr. Babar, the star witness for the prosecution, told a riveting story. A militant networker, Mr. Babar said he moved to Pakistan in November with money and instructions from Al Muhajiroun. A year later, on a fund-raising trip to London, Mr. Khyam and Anthony Garcia, an Algerian-born aspiring fashion model who had changed his name and is now accused of purchasing the secreted fertilizer.

Babar said Mr. In mid, the prosecution said, the Crevice suspects began coming together in Pakistan where Mr. Bomb-related equipment like detonators, fertilizer and aluminum powder that can be used to fuel an explosion, and beans to make the poison ricin were stored in a bedroom cupboard, he said.

The backyard was used for small-scale experiments with explosives, including the detonation of a spice jar packed with chemicals. Amin, meanwhile, was living close by. He said in his police confessions that he had been collecting money and materials for fighters in Afghanistan and passing them on to the man accused of being a Qaeda operative, Abu Munthir, who had once visited the Luton prayer center. When Mr. Khyam arrived in Pakistan in , hoping to train to fight in Afghanistan, he was told there were enough fighters there, according to Mr.

Amin told the police. Later that year, Mr. Khyam, Mr. Share via:. A review of the trials of those accused of terrorist plotting in the country between and reveals that the violent Islamist threat picture has instead been dominated by lone-actor plots, with some demonstrating connections of some sort to individuals on the battlefield in Syria or Iraq. Going forward, however, the threat is likely to become more acute as the Islamic State pivots toward international terror.

This article takes stock of the threat to the United Kingdom, drawing on court documents of recent British terror trials of those accused of plotting between and Up to this point, most plotting seen in the United Kingdom appears to demonstrate an ideological affinity to the Islamic State, with most plots fitting the lone-actor model and having no clear command and control from Islamic State operatives in Syria and Iraq.

Rarmoul-Bouhadjar pleaded guilty to possession of a bomb-making manual and was sentenced to three years in prison while Incedal instead chose to fight the charges against him.

In a first for the British judicial system, the trial was held partially under secret circumstances for reasons that were not publicly revealed. In late the two men tried to reach Syria through Turkey.

Ahmed had spent time in France, and he claimed to have fled to the Syrian-Turkish border area as he felt under pressure from security services in the United Kingdom. By early March Incedal and Rarmoul-Bouhadjar were bored of the inactivity at the safe house and told Ahmed they were going to head back to the United Kingdom. Once back in the United Kingdom, the men entered into a world of semi-criminal activity and partying.

In the end the jury cleared Incedal of the charges of plotting a terrorist attack, he was found guilty of possessing a bomb-making manual and sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison. In the second half of , British authorities disrupted several separate plots involving attack planning. The missing element from this cluster of cells, however, was clear direction from the Islamic State, though there were clear sympathies.

He subsequently moved or moved deeper into the orbit of al Muhajiroun, a British extremist grouping supportive of the Islamic State. In June he was arrested on an unrelated charge, and during a search of his belongings police found a letter addressed to his parents in which he declared:. Under interview he confirmed that the letter was his but denied he was planning an attack in the United Kingdom.

These efforts failed, and Ziamani continued to seek out radical material online.