Britain should ban Islamist organizations says one former member of Hizb ut-Tahrir

Ed Husain, British Muslim who was a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir when he was a college student in East London offers his take on the men in the Operation Crevice plot. From the London Telegraph:

I know how these young men are inspired to wreak death and destruction because I have first-hand experience of being in one such cell. I have since seen the error of my ways.

I was part of the secret cell structure of Hizb ut-Tahrir, an extremist organisation banned in most Muslim countries and rejected by most mosques in Britain. Yet the group had a free rein on university and college campuses, where it advocated that British Muslims were a community whose allegiance lay not with Queen and country, but to a coming caliph in the Middle East.

This caliph would instruct us to act as agents of the caliphate in Britain, and open a "home front" by assisting the expansionist state. We believed that all Arab governments were not sufficiently "Islamic" and were liable to removal; entire populations would submit to the army of the caliph, or face extinction.

...All this can easily be dismissed as extremist claptrap. But the mindset and ideology that spouts this worldview - Islamism - is entrenched in certain sections of the Muslim community in Britain.

...To argue that dialogue will win over extremist Islamists is a myth; theirs is a mindset that is not receptive to alternative views, and does not recognise the sacred nature of all human life.

What to do? Husain says organizations like Hizb ut-Tahrir have to be banned:

...As long as it remains legal for extremists in Britain to plan and finance Islamist attempts to mobilise the Muslim masses in the Middle East, and prepare an army for "jihad as foreign policy", there will always be a segment of this movement that will take jihad to its logical conclusion and act immediately, without leadership.

The rhetoric of jihad introduced by Hizb ut-Tahrir in my days was the preamble to 7/7 and several other attempted attacks. By proscribing Hizb ut-Tahrir, we would send a strong message to extremists that Britain will not tolerate intolerance. Yes, we are a free country with a proud tradition of liberty, but it has always had limits.

More details emerge about plotters in Operation Crevice

Apparently the neighbors of the Pakistani guesthouse where the men stayed in 2003 suspected that the noisy foreigners were up to no good. From today's London Times:

The group left early every morning. When they returned after dark they would gather outside in the courtyard, talking noisily, playing music and keeping the neighbours awake.

These young men were no ordinary students. They had come to Pakistan to study violent jihad with al-Qaeda instructors specialising in explosives, firearms and urban terrorism. Among those with bookings at the Sufi House that summer were two of the most significant Islamist terrorists that Britain has produced.

As The Times goes on to report, one of the men, "Mohammad Siddique Khan, 32, from Dewsbury, West Yorkshire,...led Britain’s first suicide bomb cell, which killed 52 innocent people on London’s transport network." Another one of the men, Omar Khyam, would be arrested before he could pull off the a huge bomb plot.

According to The Times "high-ranking" sources in Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence agency (ISI), Pakistani intelligence agents were also concerned about what the Sufi House guests were doing. As The Times Reports:

The authorities became aware that the group had travelled to the mountainous Malakand region, where al-Qaeda maintains training camps and compounds. Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, the al-Qaeda commander who was transferred to Guantanamo Bay last week, directed their training and attack planning. Intelligence sources in Pakistan claim that the group was taught how to manufacture and detonate homemade explosives using ammonium nitrate and aluminium powder.

In Lahore members of the group were observed making regular visits to the Gohar Centre, an office complex where the extremist group al-Muhajiroun and other terrorist affiliates rented space.

Pakistani intelligence sources told The Times that they reported their concerns to British agencies because they were satisified that the group was not a threat to Pakistan but was intent on carrying out attacks back in Britain.

Back in Britain, according to The Times:

A big surveillance operation involving police and MI5 was mounted in February
2004. Codenamed Operation Crevice, the investigation involved every available police and MI5 surveillance team in southern Britain and targeted homes, phones, cars and people.

Dozens of people were watched and on four occasions Khyam and another man were seen, photographed and taped in the presence of two men unknown to the watchers.

It was not until after the July 7 attacks that MI5 realised that the unknown men were Khan and Shehzad Tanweer, the Aldgate Tube bomber.

The bombers met Khyam three times in February 2004 and once more on Sunday, March 23, a week before he and his associates were arrested. Khan was also in regular phone contact with Khyam.

Eventually Khyam and some of his associates were arrested, but as The Times reports, MI5 decided not to arrest the other 55 individuals being investigated. As one British security source told The Times: “We had hundreds of names, so we had to keep an operational focus. . .We’re not the Stasi. We can’t investigate every individual.” As The Times writes:

MI5’s decisions left Mohammad Siddique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer free. For six months they kept their heads down. Then in November 2004 they flew together to Pakistan and made their way back to Abd al-Hadi’s al-Qaeda camps. There, they were groomed to be suicide bombers, encouraged to recruit other “martyrs” and taught how to make the explosives that would kill and maim in London on 7/7.

Operation Crevice: Astonishing detail

The London Telegraph reports that the jury in the Operation Crevice trial was not told about the defendants' links to the 7/7 subway and bus bombers:

The judge, Sir Michael Astill, said the Old Bailey jury had not been told of the connection as it would be too prejudicial for the fertiliser bomb plot accused to be linked to the men who caused carnage in London.

See below for more of what this trial revealed.