http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,1593480 2%255E2703,00.html
Bombers schooled in hate on visit to Lahore Daniel McGrory and Zahid Hussein July 15, 2005 HIS family were perplexed when Shehzad Tanweer decided to drop out of his sports science course at Leeds Metropolitan University at the end of last year so he could travel to Pakistan. He told them he desperately wanted to join a group of friends from his local mosque on a two-month visit to a religious school near Lahore. The 22-year-old joked with his parents that he would pick up his education when he came back, adding that it would also give him the chance to visit relatives in his father's home town, Faisalabad, which was only 160km away. Hasib Hussain's family thought time with his relatives in Pakistan might curb the teenager's rebellious streak and stop him spending his time hanging around street corners in Holbeck, drinking beer with local youths. His parents thought their plan had worked when Hussain returned much calmer and with a newfound enthusiasm about his Muslim faith. Both families are now asking themselves whether it was their sons' journeys to their homeland that corrupted them. Tanweer's uncle, Bashir Ahmed, has no doubts that it was faceless figures in Pakistan who radicalised his sports-mad nephew. "He was such a calm, loving normal boy. Extremists must have got their hands on him," the 65-year-old Leeds businessman said yesterday. "We all thought he had gone to continue his education. I thought he just wanted to improve his pronunciation. "It wasn't him. It must have been forces behind him." British intelligence has asked their Pakistani counterparts to urgently trace where the young Britons went, and more crucially, who they met, during their study tours. They need to know if the four bombers were ever there at the same time, or attended the same radical training schools. Pakistani authorities this week angrily denied accusations from India that terror training camps were once more thriving inside their borders. Natwar Singh, India's Foreign Minister, replied that he had the photographs to prove it. Western intelligence agencies have also long been concerned about the network of madrassahs, the hardline religious schools blamed for turning out a generation of young jihadists. One institution under recent scrutiny is in the industrial city of Gujranwala, just north of Lahore - where Tanweer was headed. This new generation of training centres are nothing like their predecessors, which were run by al-Qa'ida in the years before the September 11 attacks in the inhospitable mountain ranges straddling the Afghan border. Volunteers lived rough in the desert and were taught to handle weapons and explosives, as well as listening to hours of tape recordings of Osama bin Laden and other zealots. "Today the camps are more like youth hostels," said one young activist who attended a madrassah in southern Pakistan. "Recruits don't spend hours scrabbling about on outward bound courses. It is more like being in a school room. "Organisers don't want to turn out warriors who can strip down a Kalashnikov rifle blindfolded. They want to shape the mind, not the body. "They want their recruits to embrace the idea of giving their lives for their cause, and doing nothing more technical than triggering the bomb they carry." There are long periods of Koranic study but also what organisers call "the evolution of the jihad", which teaches that wars are no longer a battle between rival armies. Heroic accounts of the lives - and deaths - of insurgents in Iraq are told to the class to instruct recruits: "We fight the enemy our way." In some cases it is young Britons who have moved from Britain to make a new life for themselves in Pakistan who lecture their fellow citizens, "to make them feel more at ease". "These British lecturers know how to give practical instructions like 'don't go to well-known radical mosques in the UK as they are under police surveillance. Don't wander into bookshops which sell violent videos and militant literature as they too are being watched'. "We were told, 'continue being an ordinary John'," the former activist said. The Leeds bombers followed their instructions to the letter. They were always seen in baggy jeans, trainers, and had short haircuts and were cleanshaven, even when they turned up at the local mosque for Friday prayers. Tanweer's family say they cannot remember him arguing about politics. Hussain's relatives say there was nothing aggressive in his views about how British Muslims should behave. Experts say there is little point trying to identify the groups who recruit young Britons because they change their names and websites with bewildering frequency. The Harakat al-Ansar group has had five names in two years. Also, so many young Britons travel to Pakistan to visit family that it is impossible for the police to keep tabs on them, particularly as the vast majority go there for entirely innocent reasons. There are reports of new training centres springing up around Mansehra in the North West Frontier province, though it is not known if any British volunteers have travelled there. Magnus Ranstorp, director of the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St Andrews in Scotland said: "Of course there are still training camps. I don't think you can find full-fledged training camps in Pakistan or even Afghanistan on the same level as we had before. But there are many remote areas, many places where the lack of governance can provide excellent training ground. It can be done in underground shelters, abandoned houses. You don't need large facilities." Some Pakistan-based militant groups reportedly still scout for recruits at British mosques. Smaller mosques have their own links with madrassahs in the Punjab and other regions of Pakistan, but insist these are genuine schools of Koranic study, not terror training camps. Well-known militant groups, such as Jaish-e-Mohammed, Lashkar-e- Taiba and Harkat ul Mujahideen have operated openly in the past and in some cases with the military's support, and boasted of their British recruits. Mohammed Bilal, who was associated with Jaish-e- Mohammed, was Britain's first suicide bomber when on Christmas Day 2000 he rammed a vehicle packed with explosives into an Indian military post in Kashmir. The Pakistan Government - a key US ally in the war on terror - insist they have eradicated terror camps inside their borders. The experiences of Shehzad Tanweer and Hasib Hussain tell a different story. The Times -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? 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