http://www.tehrantimes.com/Description.asp?Da=2/19/01&Cat=4&Num=021
LONDON British security services have ordered illegal burglaries of mosques
British Secret Service Seeks to Infiltrate Muslim Groups
Compiled From Dispatches
and other Muslim sites to gather information on Islamic militants, **** The
Observer **** newspaper reported on Sunday.The left-liberal newspaper quoted
Reda Hassaine, an Algerian former journalist, who revealed how he infiltrated
the tight-knit community of Islamic militants in Britain for the
counterintelligence agency MI5 and the police special branch.Hassaine, a
37-year-old asylum-seeker, disclosed to *** The Observer ***** how officers
blackmailed him into carrying out the burglaries by threatening him with
expulsion if he refused. They also advised him on how to defraud the British
welfare system to enhance his meager earnings from them.During two years as
an informer, Hassaine was asked to steal scores of documents from senior
preachers at mosques in north London.Some were statements from extremist
groups abroad, while others were seemingly innocuous.Hassaine told his
handlers about a dirty tricks campaign against Muslim militants in London
being run by the French intelligence service, the DGSE. Though it too
involved burglaries of mosques and Islamic groups' premises as well as the
funding of a newspaper supporting the terrorist Osama bin Laden, Hassaine was
advised to help the French.DPA quoted **** The Observer **** as saying that
although Hassaine had been beaten by Muslim hardliners and faced death
threats, the Home Office had refused his asylum application.AFP said in the
meantime that the Scotland Yard did not comment on the story.Iranians have
also said that the British officials have made them infiltrate into the
Islamic communities for espionage purposes.
