http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2005/07/10/1120934128771.html
Al-Qaeda extremists flock to Britain By Patricia Hurtado in New York July 11, 2005 At least nine men who US prosecutors claim are Osama bin Laden associates in Britain remain out of reach because of protracted extradition proceedings. Newsday reported yesterday that as early as 1999, US prosecutors in New York identified and indicted al-Qaeda operatives in Britain for terrorist attacks, such as the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed 224 people. Nearly seven years after the Kenya and Tanzania attacks, three men indicted in the case are still in British custody and fighting extradition. One suspect, Ibrahim Eidarous, has been quietly freed from a psychiatric hospital by British authorities because he has leukemia. Another man sought by US authorities, Abu Hamza al-Masri, went on trial last Tuesday at London's Old Bailey, for allegedly inciting violence against non-Muslims in Britain. Masri was already under indictment in New York for attempting to establish an al-Qaeda training camp in Oregon and assisting the Islamic extremists who took tourists hostage in Yemen in 1998. Egyptian-born Masri, who became a British citizen in 1981, allegedly volunteered to fight in Afghanistan in the 1990s, then returned to Britain to preach justifications for violence against those he perceived to be Islam's enemies. Throughout, Masri met periodically with Britain's intelligence services and anti-terrorism police. Only in late 2004 did the Crown Prosecution Service conclude it had enough evidence to bring criminal charges, even though some of the speeches it relied on had been made several years before. London - long seen as a refuge for Middle Eastern dissidents - has more recently attracted Islamic radicals with connections to Morocco, Egypt, Syria, the Persian Gulf and Pakistan. Osama bin Laden opened a political and media office there in 1994. It closed four years later when his local lieutenant, Khalid Fawwaz, was arrested for aiding al-Qaeda's attack on two US embassies in Africa. As bin Laden's ideology of making war on the West spread in the years before September 11, 2001, London became "the Star Wars bar scene" for Islamic radicals, as former White House counter-terrorism official Steven Simon called it. One man attracted to this "bar scene" was Syrian-born Mustafa Setmariam Naser, who has been linked to the Madrid bombings, and emerged yesterday as a London blasts suspect. Now believed to be in Iraq, he once based himself in London, editing Ansar - Al Islam, a radical Islamic magazine. Al-Qaeda still retains broader connections to London than to any other city in Europe. "London especially has a very rich and open society," says Mary Jo White, former US lawyer whose office won a string of successful terrorist prosecutions, beginning with the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing. "In some senses, it's as a result of that that it is a safe place for them to operate for a while." Evidence shows at least a supporting connection to London groups or individuals in many of the al-Qaeda related attacks of the past seven years. Al-Qaeda's connections in London are described as remarkably diverse, ranging from the core organisation's early formation through its phase of elaborate planned global strikes between 1999 and 2001, to its more recent period of diffuse franchises to the attack last Thursday that British authorities say bears al-Qaeda's stamp. In the 1980s and 1990s, between 300 and 600 British citizens passed through Afghan training camps. Several recent cases suggest the seeding of a new generation of British residents travelling as volunteers to fight with the insurgency in Iraq. Newsday, The Washington Post, Agence France-Presse -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? 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