London, and Finsbury Park in particular, became the center of a thriving Islamist scene, earning itself the nicknames of "Londonistan" and "Beirut-on-Thames." The Algerians began to publish the Al Ansar newsletter, which attracted some of the most important figures in the European jihadi underworld, such as Abu Qatada, Abu Musab al Suri, and Rachid Ramda, discussed in chapter 4. But London also became the home of important Islamist leaders from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Syria, and many other Muslim countries. It was in London that all these dissidents met and interacted, benefiting from the traditional tolerance of the British government. Despite repeated warnings from moderate Arab governments and from French intelligence that some of these individuals were extremely dangerous, Britain let them operate undisturbed for years. Finsbury Park became the meeting point for all of Europe's Islamic radicals.
In 1996 it became clear that the takeover of the Finsbury Park mosque was complete. After the board of trustees of the mosque allowed a radical Egyptian engineering student, Abu Hamza al Masri, to give sermons during Friday prayers, the one-eyed, hooked-handed veteran of Afghanistan and Bosnia immediately began preaching his radical views. Displeased with the cleric's poisonous rhetoric, the board asked him to step down, but it found itself powerless to enforce its demand. A trustee recalled that "when we met him again to ask him to go, he had several heavily built minders with him who told us that we had to leave." Even an injunction from the High Court could not stop Abu Hamza, who used his thugs to prevent it from taking effect. Some of the more vocal trustees were ambushed outside their homes and beaten. With British authorities reluctant to interfere in something they perceived as an internal affair of the Muslim community, the Egyptian turned the mosque into something more closely resembling the guest houses for the mujahideen in Peshawar and Jalalabad than a place of worship in a European capital. Reportedly, its basement was used to plan attacks, forge documents, and practice the use of weapons. More thorough training in guerrilla warfare was provided in the English countryside on weekends organized by militants. A worshiper at the mosque told the London Times that by 1998, groups of young men were living inside the mosque. "They were strangers. We asked them what they were doing but they warned us not to interfere. Many of them were Algerian as many Algerian families were moving into this area."63
It was at that time that Abu Doha, a senior GSPC member who had spent a great deal of time in the Afghan training camps, began building his network. Splitting his time between the mosque and his apartment, located in the same neighborhood, Abu Doha recruited hundreds of young men for the training camps in Afghanistan or for the battlefield in Chechnya. His efforts were bolstered by the fiery sermons of Abu Hamza, the religious teachings of Abu Qatada (whom Spanish authorities call "al Qaeda's ideologue in Europe"), and the tales about the glory of jihad told by the many veterans of the Afghan or Bosnian war living in London. Hundreds of videotapes of jihad from various parts of the world were shown and literature from different militant groups was distributed under the eyes of British authorities. Large numbers of young, impressionable Muslim men were lured into the clerics' vision of the world, a paranoid world where Jews and Christians continuously plot against Islam and where the only solution for Muslims is to wage jihad against them.
The list of militants who traveled from places throughout the world to London and spent time in or around Finsbury Park reads like a who's who of terrorism. Almost all members of the Algerian network walked through the mosque's wooden doors. K, the unnamed detainee in Belmarsh prison who played a key role in the ricin plot, lived in the basement of the mosque for more than a year between 1999 and 2000. Yacine Aknouche, one of the militants sentenced in Paris for the Strasbourg plot, moved to London in 1996; he said that after hearing Abu Qatada's sermons and mingling with the worshipers in Finsbury Park, he was recruited by Abu Doha to go to Afghanistan. Another of the militants convicted in Paris, Laurent Mourad (the man who "lost" his passport five times), told investigators that it was in Abu Doha's Finsbury Park apartment that he met with other militants such as Kadre and Slimane Khal- faoui. There they frequently watched tapes of the jihad in Chechnya, after which Abu Doha often preached on the duty of all Muslims to fight jihad to defend their fellow Muslims.6a
Young men with no direction, such as Mourad or Aknouche, believed they had found a purpose for their lives and agreed to go to Afghanistan. The network supplied them with money, contacts, documents, and, more important, a sense of belonging. Awaiting them in the Afghan city of Jalalabad was the other end of the Algerian network. A veteran of the war against the Soviets, an Algerian called Abu Jaffar, was running the guesthouse for his countrymen. Coordinating his activities with Abu Doha in London and with al Qaeda leaders in Peshawar and Kandahar, Abu Jaffar welcomed the recruits to Afghanistan and sent them to the camps.61 Once their training was completed, the same sophisticated network decided where the operatives should be deployed. Often they were just sent back to London, where the leaders of the network decided how to better use them.
Several individuals who made headlines after 9/11 also had close ties to the Finsbury Park mosque. According to the brother of Zacarias Moussaoui, the only man charged in the United States in connection with the attacks of 9/11, his radicalization took place at the mosque. In 2002 Moussaoui's mother, a secularized Muslim woman who had immigrated to France from Morocco, sharply criticized Britain's tolerance for radical preachers. She told a reporter from the Observer: "These British imams are a very bad influence on young Muslims. The British government has a responsibility for allowing such people to preach hatred and extremism in public places such as mosques. It has nothing to do with real Islam. It is false."66
Other frequent attendees of the mosque included the shoe-bomber Richard Reid and Nizar Trabelsi, a former professional soccer player who was sentenced to ten years in prison by a Belgian court after admitting he planned to drive a car bomb into the canteen of the US air base in Kleine Brogel. Trabelsi, Reid, and Moussaoui were all acquaintances of another celebrity who used to worship in Finsbury Park, Djamel Beghal. The French-Algerian, who had moved to London in 1997, is thought to be one of bin Laden's top men in Europe and shuttled frequently between the Continent and Afghanistan.
Several individuals who worshiped at the Finsbury Park mosque ended up at Camp Delta, the detention facility set up by the US military in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Imad Kanuni, a French Moroccan detained for more than two years in Gitmo, spent time in both the Finsbury Park mosque and Abu Qatada's mosque after he returned from the camps in Afghanistan.67 He was apprehended by US forces in Afghanistan after 9/11. Brahim Yadel, a Frenchman who also was apprehended in Afghanistan, had received money from Abu Doha to go there while he was living in London.68 And it was information obtained from British detainees in Guantanamo Bay that led US authorities in April 2004 to indict Abu Hamza, the imam of the mosque, on eleven terrorism-related charges, which included attempting to establish a training camp inside the United States.69 Following a request from Washington, British authorities arrested Abu Hamza; proceedings for his extradition are now under way. In October 2004, he was also charged by the British with sixteen offenses.
But critics say that Abu Hamza's arrest came too late, and that the British government's tolerance of his activities and rhetoric exemplified its naive leniency toward Islamic radicals. This tolerance was extended despite the authorities' knowledge of Abu Hamza's personal involvement, while in London, in two terrorist plots in Yemen that targeted Westerners. In December 1998, Abu Hamza's son and stepson, along with a French citizen and three British citizens, were arrested by Yemeni police for plotting attacks against British and American targets. A few days later, Yemeni militants kidnapped a group of Western tourists whom they intended to exchange for the detained European militants. Just a few hours after the kidnapping, according to Yemeni authorities, the leader of the group called Abu Hamza in London to tell him of the operation's success. No exchange was ever made: Yemeni police freed the hostages (four of w
hich died in the operation) and arrested the militants, who were tried. Yemeni authorities sought Abu Hamza's extradition, claiming that he ,.was the main instigator" in both incidents.70 British authorities did detain Abu Hamza, but they decided against extradition and released him, even though British blood had been spilled.71
Going beyond mere tolerance, the British welfare system also extended the radical cleric generous benefits. According to the British tabloid the Sun, for years Abu Hamza received more than a thousand pounds a week in benefits. While publicly calling for attacks against the British government, he did not disdain cashing its checks; his rent, too, was paid by British taxpayers-£2,400 a month. Even in detention, the cleric has continued to take advantage of government largess. He has received a new aluminum hook worth £5,000 from the national health system and has sued welfare officials for more money.72
Sadly, Abu Hamza's is not an isolated case. Many other radical clerics living in Britain have been the beneficiaries of the country's welfare system while preaching the destruction of the country itself. Abu Qatada was known to receive at least £400 a week in government benefits, £322 for housing, and £70 because he was too sick to work.73 The leader of the ultraradical al Muhajiroun group in London, Omar Bakri, who has openly called for attacks against the United Kingdom and praised Osama bin Laden, receives more than £1,000 a month. Over the twenty years he has spent in Great Britain, Bakri is believed to have received more than 275,000 pounds (roughly 490,000 US dollars) in state benefits, and the government even helped him pay the lease of his 3 1,000- pound-worth Ford Galaxy.74 Sayful Islam, a British-born leader of al Muhajiroun in Luton, who said he felt "elated" when he saw the planes hitting the towers of the World Trade Center, also lives on the public dole while he openly brags about his intentions of overthrowing the British government: "When a bomb attack happens here, I won't be against it, even if it kills my own children. I am a Muslim living in Britain, and I give my allegiance to Allah."75 Mohammed al Gharbouzi, a Moroccan cleric living in London who is wanted by Moroccan authorities for his role in the Casablanca bombings that killed more than thirty people, is less fortunate, as he has to rely on his wife for benefits. But Mrs. Ghar- bouzi claims more than £1,000 a month in income and housing support.76
Aside from the UK's tolerance of radical rhetoric and generous welfare system, the chaotic and generous British immigration system is one of the main reasons why militants have flocked to London. The consequences for the country's security became clear during the ricin plot, as many of its key players were failed asylum seekers whom authorities had failed to deport. Security officials and some politicians had warned of the dangers of the nation's immigration policy, especially regarding Algerian asylum seekers, but their voices were ignored by the establishment. Mohammed Sekkoum, the chairman of the Algerian Refugee Council in London, had stated repeatedly and publicly that hundreds of his countrymen who were involved in terrorist activities were living in Britain. "People who are really terrorists are being allowed in and they are not going to stop killing when they get to this country," Sekkoum said in a January 2003 interview."
In the days following the discovery of ricin, immigration officials disclosed alarming figures on Algerian asylum seekers: as a rule, just one in ten Algerians refused asylum in the United Kingdom leaves the country, and of the more than 2,500 individuals whose claims were turned down in 2001, only one hundred twenty-five were deported or left voluntarily.78 Britain's generosity toward Algerian refugees is even more striking when compared to the policies adopted by other countries. According to a study published by the House of Lords, 80 percent of Algerians who apply for asylum status receive it in Britain, while in France only 5 percent do.79 Obviously, not all Algerian asylum seekers are terrorists; nevertheless, authorities believe that at least one hundred known or suspected Algerian terrorists have entered the United Kingdom since 2000.80
Sadly, but predictably, Britain paid the price for all its mistakes in July 2005, when London was attacked in the span of two weeks by two groups of terrorists that managed, on July 7, or attempted, on July 21, to detonate explosive devices on Tube trains and buses. While the attackers did not belong to the Algerian network, the same factors that had made the Algerians thrive throughout the 1990s (tolerance for extremist preaching, ultragenerous asylum and welfare systems) paved the way to the July 2005 bombers.
Investigators discovered that all the London bombers began their journey into radical Islam in Britain, as all of them were either born in the UK or had moved to the country at an early age. They all prayed in mosques located throughout England that were well known to authorities for their radicalism but had been let free to indoctrinate young British Muslims. Not surprisingly, investigators believe that one of the possible connections between the two teams of bombers is the Finsbury Park mosque, where key players of both July plots used to worship. 81 And authorities also had specific information on the radicalism of some of the men. In 2003 the trustees of the Stockwell mosque, a moderate place of worship in South London, reported to the police the radical and violent activities of Osman Hussein, the man who attempted to blow up a train near Shepherd's Bush station on July 21. The trustees complained that Hussein and his friends had "an agenda to turn this centre into another Finsbury Park mosque" and that "problems have now reached a level where police help is urgently needed."82 No action was taken by the police, and Hussein was not monitored. Even more disturbing is the fact that British domestic intelligence, the M15, was aware that Mohammed Siddique Khan, the alleged ringleader of the deadly July 7 commando, was a radical with dangerous connections, having gathered information about his involvement with a terrorist cell dismantled in 2004. Nevertheless, Khan was deemed "not a threat" by M15 and not investigated. 83 Curiously, while still on an M15 list as a person of interest, Khan received two generous grants from the European Union to open gyms for the Asian population of Beeston, the Leeds suburb where Khan worked as a teacher's aide and recruited some of the other July 7 bombers.84
And while the first team was made up of three British-born Muslims and a Jamaican convert, the "failed bombers" of July 21 were asylum seekers who obtained their residency permits and British passports through scams and irregularities. According to published reports, Mukhtar Said Ibrahim, the Eritrean man who allegedly placed a bomb on a double-decker bus on July 21, obtained a British passport even though he had spent several years in jail for mugging and knife possession. According to British law, a key condition for obtaining citizenship is that an applicant must be "of good character."85 Ibrahim and his three July 21 accomplices, all immigrants from war-torn East African countries who sought refuge in Britain in the 1990s, are also accused of having used multiple identities and nationalities to fool British immigration authorities. The Bank of England's official order to freeze the assets of the men shows that Ibrahim used six aliases, Osman Hussein had five, Mohammed Ramzi six, and Omar Yassin five.86 Naturally, once they fooled the nation's immigration laws, the men also took advantage of Britain's generous welfare system. Investigators believe that the four men collected more than £500,000 in state benefits since their arrival into the country.87
Apparently, after the outrage caused by the London attacks in the United Kingdom, things are about to change. "Britain ... is a tolerant and good natured nation ... however ... this very tolerance and good nature should not be abused by a small but fanatical minority."88 With these words, spoken less than a month after the first London attacks, Prime Minister Tony Blair unveiled his proposal for a new antiterrorism approach (examined also in chapter 3). Aside from introducing laws that punish those who advocate terror, the British government is planning to expedite deportations and extraditions of those involved in extremist activities. Blair announced that "anyone who has participated in terrorism, or has anything to do with it anywhere" will be automatically denied asylum, and naturalized British citizens who engage in terror activities will be stripped of their citizenship. Mosques, bookstores, and Web sites that adv
ocate violence will be shut down. "Coming to Britain," concluded the prime minister, "is not a right, and even when people have come here, staying here carries with it a duty. That duty is to share and support the values that sustain the British way of life. Those that break that duty and try to incite hatred or engage in violence against our country and its people have no place here."89
NOTES
1. Alex Rodriguez, "Chechen Fighters Lose Stronghold in Georgia Gorge; U.S. Fears Militants Linked to Al Qaeda," Chicago Tribune, July 20, 2003.
2. For his role in the Strasbourg plot, Mourad was sentenced to six years in prison by a Paris court.
3. Frederic Chambon, "Comment Naissent et Vivent les Reseaux d'Al Qaida en Europe," Le Monde, January 3, 2003.
4. The safe house in boulevard Magenta belonged to Samir Korchi, a member of the Algerian network who was later sentenced by the French court to four years for his part in the Strasbourg plot. Korchi confessed that his apartment was often used by members of the network that needed a "safe" place to stay.
5. Chambon, "Comment Naissent et Vivent les Reseaux d'Al Qaida en Europe."
6. Italian authorities suspect that members of the Algerian network based in Milan helped Arif and Echiker with false documents and hosted them for a few weeks.
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