Who are the "Islamophobes" again?

Amir Taheri ponders whether accusations that Britain is "Islamophobic" are really fair in a New York Post editorial. Here are some key excerpts:

Britain and a few other Western democracies are the only places on earth where Muslims of all persuasions can practice their faith in full freedom. A thick directory of Muslim institutions in Britain lists more than 300 different sects - most of them banned and persecuted in every Muslim country on earth.

A Shiite Muslim can't build a mosque in Cairo; his Sunni brother can't have a mosque of his own in Tehran. Editions of the Koran printed in Egypt or Saudi Arabia are seized as contraband in Iran; Egypt and most other Muslim nations in turn ban the import of Korans printed in Iran. The works of a majority of Muslim writers and philosophers are banned in most Muslim countries.

In Britain, all mosques are allowed; no Muslim author or philosopher is banned. More importantly, rival Muslim sects do not massacre each other, as is the case in half a dozen Muslim-majority countries.

The only time that the British media practice self-censorship is when an item might be seen as remotely anti-Islamic. . .

Even the most rabid anti-West and pro-terror Islamist clerics are granted visas to come to the United Kingdom and spread their message of hatred (at times, as guests of Mayor Livingstone and his friends). Hamas and Hezbollah are strongly present in Britain; the Islamic Liberation Party, banned in all Muslim countries, has its headquarters in London.

Pro-Hamas and pro-Hezbollah militants are featured on British TV almost every evening. The Islamic Republic of Iran's "Supreme Guide," Ali Khamenei, maintains a "personal office" in London with twice as many personnel as Iran's official embassy.

Taheri suggests that the real "Islamophobes" are those who slaughter innocents under the banner of Islam:

The terrorists who tried to kill people in London and Glasgow are the same ones killing people in Baghdad and Karachi. They are the same who killed tens of thousands of Egyptians and perhaps as many as a quarter-million Algerians over the decades. They are motivated not by any religious grievance but by an insatiable appetite for political power. They want to seize control of societies, break them into submission and impose on every individual a mad tyranny of terror in the name of God.

If Islam is the religion of peace, then the real Islamphobes are those who planted the car bombs in London and Glasgow - not the poor Brits who are censoring themselves and curbing their hard-won freedoms in order not to offend "the Muslim community."

As the NYT puts process over substance it seems to miss the real story

The New York Times ran a pretty abbreviated report on the British terror trial that resulted in sentences totaling 136 years for the seven men convicted of planning, as the Times put it, "spectacular attacks in the United States and Britain."

In the Times presentation of this story, the really interesting aspect of this case seems to be that it raised "a fiery debate in Britain over whether the period of permissible detention without charge for terrorism suspects should be extended from 28 to 90 days" as most of the evidence presented at the trial came from the investigation after the men were arrested. As the Times summarized the police side of this debate: "Modern terrorism investigations need much more time to permit the police to carry out complicated investigations that require advanced code-breaking and language skills across international frontiers."

Consistent with the Times interest in process over substance then, missing from its account were any substantive details of the various plots, the motives of the men, or how these seven individuals came together in the first place.

So to get at that information, I went to the Telegraph.

As to the specifics of the plots, here is what this London newspaper reported:

[Dhiren] Barot, 34, [the mastermind,] spent a year researching and drawing up a 39-page document that he presented to senior al-Qa'eda planners in April 2004. It contained a number of potentially devastating ideas.

The "Gas Limos Project" proposed packing limousines with propane gas cylinders and driving them into underground car parks beneath targets. Police were unable to identify definite targets but found a list of railway stations and hotels in central London.

Barot also proposed a radioactive "dirty bomb", hijacking a train and blowing up a petrol tanker in a series of co-ordinated attacks. The plans had also suggested attacking Tube trains under the Thames, to flood the tunnel, and the Heathrow Express

As part of a previous plan to attack financial institutions in Washington and New York, Barot - a Hindu convert to Islam - had made a video in which one of the terrorists could be heard making the sound of a mock explosion at the World Trade Centre, five months before the September 11 attacks.

The gang had planned to blow up Tube trains under the Thames

Police also found a list a potential hotel targets in central London, including the Savoy, the Churchill InterContinental, the Berkeley, the Hyatt Carlton Tower and the Marriott at Marble Arch. The gang had researched details of entry points and underground car parks.

There was also discussion about using a radioactive dirty bomb to "close off an area the size of Manhattan'', though there was little evidence that they could acquire the radioactive material needed.

In a sidebar, the Telegraph provides some background on the ringleader, Barot:

Born a Hindu in the city of Baroda in the North West Indian state of Gujarat, the son of a banker from Nairobi, Kenya and an Indian mother, his parents fled the worsening political situation in East Africa in 1972, when Dhiren was a year old.

Manu Barot and his wife Bhartia arrived in Britain with Dhiren and his older sister, and moved into a 1930s semi-detached home in a cul-de-sac in the suburb of Kingsbury, Northwest London where Manu worked as a storeman at a local engineering factory and his wife worked at the local Sainsbury supermarket.

Barot was reportedly an "average student" whose highest level of educational attainment was a certificate in pre-vocational education from a local technical college. As the Telegraph continues:

Soon afterwards he converted to Islam, causing a rift with his father, and began attending prayer meetings at Willesden Library, run by the radical cleric Abdullah el-Faisal and at Finsbury Park Mosque run by Abu Hamza.

He worked in a series of hotels before taking a job as a booking clerk for Air Malta in Piccadilly, central London, leaving in September 1995 to go travelling.

Barot flew to Karachi in Pakistan and traveled from there to Kashmir where Muslims and Hindus had been involved in decades of fighting over the disputed territory.

There, he said, he "witnessed a side of Islam which cannot be found in classrooms."

He took extensive notes about the weapons and explosives and moved to Afghanistan where he spent a year working as a trainer in one of the camps for Islamic fighters.

It was probably during that time that he met Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind behind the September 11 attacks and became involved with al-Qaeda, where according to US sources, he gained the nick name Esa al-Britani and Esa al-Hindi.

In September 1999 he traveled to the Philippines where he was trained in firearms, munitions and explosives handling.

He traveled to Karachi in January 2000 and from there to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia with Osama bin Laden’s former bodyguard Walid bin Attash, known as "Khallad".

American intelligence sources believe he met the al-Qa’eda planner Hambali in Kuala Lumpur just as the September 11 attacks were being finalised.

It is also possible that he met two of the men who were to become hijackers on September 11, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, who were meeting with Hambali in Kuala Lumpur around the same time.

In March 2001 Barot visited New York to look at potential targets.

The information was so detailed that it amounted to a virtual structural survey concentrating on how explosions could bring the buildings down but they were put on hold after September 11.

American supergrass Mohammed Junaid Babar said Barot called a summit in the Pakistani tribal area of South Waziristan in March 2003, shortly after the arrest of several senior al-Qa’eda figures.

His British plans were probably presented to senior al-Qa’eda commanders when Barot flew to Lahore in Pakistan in February 2004.

He returned to Britain on April 21 using a false passport after apparently receiving the go-ahead.

In other words, this group wasn't just a bunch of al Qaeda wannabes operating alone over there in England. Barot was working directly with KSM, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, as well as other al Qaeda leaders, for example the men he called to a meeting in South Waziristan in March 2003, after KSM was arrested.

Now as to why the New York Times didn't think these details were interesting, well, I guess for the same reason they thought recent news of the JFK plotters' arrests wasn't Page One material either.

Anyway, the Telegraph also provides some interesting biographical details on the men. They ranged in age from 23 to 34.

One, Mohammed Naveed Bhatti, 27, had an engineering degree from Brunel University, the same school attended by two members of the fertilizer gang, another sleeper cell apprehended in Britain. This engineer's primary role in the plot, incidentally, seems to have been to chauffeur the C-student- Barot - around. Oh how his parents must cringe at reading that detail.

Zia ul-Haq, 28, also had a professional degree, his in architecture. But perhaps his parents can take some pride in the fact that at least their son seems to have gotten some respect from the ringleader, for whom, the Telegraph goes on to say, he "acted as a kind of consultant...and helped him gain access to specialist libraries."

The youngest member of the group, Omar Abdur Rehman, 23, also had promising career prospects. A graphic information design candidate, his contribution to the plot was to perform reconnaissance at the Ramada Hotel in Watford where he had a summer job to see how it would size up as a target.

In a sidebar analysis to the Telegraph story Philip Johnston provides these details on how these men met each other and how the police came to find them:

[Barot] recruited his terrorist cell - basically a support network - from among people he met at mosques and political meetings in Britain. Most were of Pakistani background and some had already been to training camps there, another constant in these plots.

Police and MI5 believe Barot was within six weeks of launching attacks in London. But he was detained only after police in Pakistan arrested a leading al-Qa'eda operative whose computer contained details of Barot's activities.

How many more ''sleeper'' cells are there?

British intelligence worry that British terrorists may be plotting to hit the U.S.

From yesterday's London Times:

British intelligence chiefs have confirmed to The Times that they are worried by the prospect of the next attack in America being committed by a British citizen arriving without hindrance in the US on the visa waiver programme. They are liaising closely with the FBI to identify possible suspects.

This statement was made in response to the U.S. State Department's release of its annual report on terrorism around the world. As the London Times reported on these findings:

The report also quoted Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, the head of MI5, who made the “stark assessment” that there were 200 known terror networks in Britain, 1,699 individuals and 30 terror plots. It said: “The British Government viewed radicalisation of young people in the UK and elsewhere ... as a growing threat to international and British security.”

The report said that there is evidence that al-Qaeda is shifting to “guerrilla terrorism”, through which it seeks to “manipulate and exploit grievances in at-risk populations”. It added: “A deeper trend is the shift in the nature of terrorism, from traditional international terrorism of the late 20th century into a form of transnational non-state warfare that resembles of form of global insurgency.”

"Operation Crevice" trial in Britain: A lot to learn here

Five Britons were convicted today of charges that they plotted to carry out terror attacks in Britain that would cause massive civilian casualties. The Washington Post reports:

The five men, convicted after a year-long trial that ended with 27 days of jury deliberation, were convicted of a 2003 plot to use a massive fertilizer bomb to attack a shopping center, nightclub or Britain's natural gas and electricity networks. Officials said the scheme, in which police recovered more than 1,300 pounds of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, was at the time the most ambitious plot to kill mass numbers of people in Britain ever disrupted by British security services.

The convicted men, who face life sentences, are: Omar Khyam, 26, the group's presumed ringleader; Waheed Mahmood, 34; Jawad Akbar, 23; Salahuddin Amin, 31; and Anthony Garcia, 24. Two other men, Nabeel Hussain and Khyam's brother, Shujah Mahmood, were found not guilty in a case the British police referred to as "Operation Crevice."

Here are some of the trial's highlights from the Post dispatch:

Testimony at trial also included repeated references to "Abdul Hadi" a top al-Qaeda operative who had been involved in training the men at camps in Pakistan. Gohel said security officials have confirmed that the man was Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, 46, a top al-Qaeda figure now in custody at the U.S.-run prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The Pentagon announced last week that al-Iraqi, described by officials as a key aide to bin Laden and one of the extremist network's highest-ranking operatives, was arrested late last year on his way to Iraq and handed over to the CIA.

Gohel said the Crevice suspects' involvement with such a top-level operative was "very significant" and showed that their plot was "not just al-Qaeda-inspired, but actually assisted by, and under the control of, al-Qaeda."

Evidence presented at trial, which the media was banned from reporting until now under British law, showed that the Operation Crevice plotters met several times with two of the bombers from the July 7 attack, known here as 7/7. Police testified that 7/7 ringleader Mohammed Siddique Khan and bomber Shehzad Tanweer, who both died in the suicide bomb attacks, were caught in surveillance operations leading up to the Crevice arrests.

So if the police were surveilling these two 7/7 bombers, why didn't they arrest them before they could carry out the attacks?

"If Mohammed Siddique Khan had been caught on tape saying, 'I want to blow up London and I'm going to do it,' they should have arrested him," [Sajjan M. Gohel, a terrorism and security specialist] said. "But there was nothing he was saying that was so clear and dangerous. It's impossible to keep an eye on every single individual."

Terrorism does seem to present a genuine problem for law enforcement, as the Post goes on to suggest:

"There is always a balance to be struck between allowing terrorists to go ahead with their planning, so that we can gather evidence, and making sure the public are safe. We will never gamble with public safety," [Peter Clarke, head of counter-terrorism at Scotland Yard,] said. "In this case we decided to arrest the plotters when we feared that they were getting closer to mounting their attack."

Here's an interesting revelation:

Monday's verdict was also notable because it was reached with the unprecedented help of a U.S.-raised al-Qaeda operative turned informant. Mohammed Junaid Babar, 31, who was born in Pakistan but moved to New York when he was two, was the prosecution's chief witness.

Babar was arrested in the United States in 2004 and pleaded guilty to terror-related charges. He faces 70 years in prison but agreed to testify against his former colleagues in return for a reduced sentence.

Finally, note this chilling detail:

Babar's mother had been in one of the World Trade Center towers when they were attacked on Sept. 11, 2001, but escaped without injury. Despite that, Babar told investigators that within a week he flew to Pakistan to join a war of jihad against the west.

Wow this al-Iraqi fellow was the one who masterminded the 7/7 bombings in London

Not to mention other terrorist plots in London. From The (London) Times:

After al-Qaeda restructured its operations in Pakistan’s tribal areas he sought out young Britons for instruction at training camps. In late 2004 Abd al-Hadi met Mohammad Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer, from Leeds, at a militant camp in Pakistan and, in the words of a senior investigator, “retasked them” to become suicide bombers.

They were sent back to Britain where they led the terrorist cell that carried out the 7/7 bombings, killing 52 Tube and bus passengers. Pakistani intelligence sources said that Abd al-Hadi was also in contact with Rachid Rauf, a Birmingham man now in prison in Pakistan and alleged to be a key figure in last summer’s alleged plot to blow up transatlantic airliners in mid-flight.

Abd al-Hadi has also been linked to a number of other foiled al-Qaeda plots to carry out attacks in Britain. But the Security Service, which has previously sent officials to question detainees at Guantanamo Bay, may not have the opportunity to question him directly.

Wouldn't you know, Britain's human rights issues will likely mean that British counterterrorism officials won't be able to question al-Hadi themselves. As the Times explains:

The Government’s recently adopted position in favour of closing Guantanamo Bay is likely to act as a bar on agents travelling there. British Intelligence would have to rely on relaying questions it would like asked by American interrogators.

I guess al-Hadi's capture explains why, as the Times reported, British officials were able to say with confidence last week that the al-Qaeda leadership was behind the recent spate of terror plots in Britain.

But it's too early to start opening bottles of champagne. As the Times reports:

Michael Scheuer, former head of the CIA’s bin Laden unit, told The Times that catching Abd al-Hadi was important but that it did not spell the end of al-Qaeda.

He said Abd al-Hadi had been an important figure in developing al-Qaeda’s strategy in the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan and also helped to redirect its terrorist strategy in Europe.

Mr Scheuer, a senior fellow at the Jamestown Foundation in Washington, said: “It is a blow for al-Qaeda, especially in Iraq, where it will have consequences.

“But al-Qaeda always plans for succession, and there will have been someone lined up to take his place. It is nonsense to think that al-Qaeda is dead.”