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The ink bomb found at a British airport was defused just 17 minutes before it was due to explode, it was claimed yesterday.
Al Qaeda planners believed the plane carrying it would have been over the Atlantic or the U.S. mainland when it was primed to go off in a Lockerbie-style attack.
But the plane made an unscheduled refuelling stop at East Midlands Airport because of the weight of its cargo. Such was the expertise of the bombmaker and the sophistication of the device that it took a bomb disposal expert seven attempts to establish that it was viable and defuse it.
A cartridge which was contained in a parcel intercepted by Dubai security officials found in a package onboard a cargo plane coming from Yemen
One of the two mail bombs sent from Yemen last week was defused just 17 minutes before it was set to explode, France's interior minister revealed. Pictured, the cartridge found in a parcel intercepted by Dubai security officials
The parcel included explosive materials hidden inside the ink cartridge and an electric circuit connected to a mobile phone SIM card
The parcel included explosive materials hidden inside the ink cartridge and an electric circuit connected to a mobile phone SIM card
The bomb hidden in a printer cartridge contained 400 grams of the powerful explosive PETN – 50 times more than needed to punch a hole in the aircraft’s skin – and was wired to a mobile phone.
More...
* Extremist website that inspired stabbing of Stephen Timms urges Muslims to 'raise the knife of jihad' to other MPs
* SPECIAL REPORT: The 'DIY jihadists' paid for by us... Roshonara Choudhry supporters are living on benefits
* Pictured moments after 'explosion' forced emergency landing, the Qantas superjumbo with a foot-long hole torn in its wing
* PETER MCKAY: Twisting our fear of terror
The SIM card had been removed so it could not receive calls and the Yemen-based bombmaker set up either the alarm or timer functions to detonate the device.
French Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux said yesterday it had been ‘defused only 17 minutes before the moment it was set to explode’ but did not elaborate.
A Yemeni man walks past a branch of the US package delivery firm UPS in Sana'a where the parcels were originally posted
A Yemeni man walks past a branch of the US package delivery firm UPS in Sana'a where the parcels were originally posted
Al Qaeda had carried out a ‘dry run’ to see how long the package would take to arrive in the U.S.
According to U.S. intelligence, the test run in mid-September involved a package containing books, a computer disc and religious literature, but no explosives. The aim was to allow bombmakers to work out the timing to trigger the device so it would cause maximum damage.
The explosive concerned, PETN, is a variation of Semtex, the material used to bring down Pan Am 103 over the Scottish town killing 270 people in Britain’s worst act of terrorism.
Home Secretary Theresa May likened the plot in a speech on Wednesday to Lockerbie and said : ‘It could have destroyed the aircraft on which it was being carried, over the UK, over the U.S. or on the ground.
‘The specifics of this attack – notably the type of device and how it was concealed – were new to us. The principle of the attack – a device placed in unaccompanied baggage – was not. It bears some resemblance to the attack on Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie in 1988.’
The flight originated in Yemen and went via Cologne, Germany. It had been due to fly straight on to Chicago but the schedule was changed because the cargo was too heavy to complete the transatlantic leg, so it stopped at East Midlands to refuel.
It was during the journey that the Saudi Arabian authorities provided intelligence from a former Al Qaeda fighter, who days earlier had been spirited out of Yemen and become a ‘supergrass’, to the CIA that two printer bombs were among cargo packages on their way to the U.S.
Addressed to synagogues in President Barack Obama’s home city of Chicago, one was found in Dubai and defused.
The second was found and made safe at East Midlands airport, but only after the suspect package was examined seven times to see whether it was a bomb.
Enlarge Timetable of near-tragedy graphic
Initially, it was thought to be a dummy package’ and described as ‘negative’. But after the confirmation of a viable device in Dubai and, intelligences sources said yesterday, precise information of where explosives had been hidden in that device, the UK package was made safe.
While the aircraft was taken to a remote area and much of the cargo unloaded, the airport continued to function with the runway in regular use.
Both bombs had been attached to a syringe containing lead azide, a chemical initiator that would have detonated the PETN explosive packed into the printer cartridge.
Mr Hortefeux suggested yesterday that disaster had been just minutes away when he told told France’s state-run France-2 television: ‘One of the packages was defused only 17 minutes before the moment that it was set to explode.’
While police, government and intelligence sources in Britain refused to comment publicly, privately a number of senior security sources disputed the claim, saying they ‘did not recognise’ the 17-minute figure and stressing that tests were still taking place on the device.
Newark: A bomb squad officer carries a package away from a UPS cargo plane as the plane and its contents are searched in Newark
A bomb squad officer carries a package away from a UPS cargo plane as the plane and its contents are searched in Newark, New Jersey last week
However, when challenged, French officials repeated the time and said that the device referred to had been the one at East Midlands airport.
POLICE NEEDED SEVEN CHECKS
The revelation that Scotland Yard counter terrorism experts realised the suspect package was a ‘viable bomb’ only after they examined it for a seventh time is a chilling reminder of how near Al Qaeda came to causing carnage.
The drama started at 3.28am last Friday when Leicestershire police found a suspect package in a sealed cargo container on the UPS plane which landed at East Midlands airport for refuelling.
Within hours, the Metropolitan Police had joined the operation. By 10am, tests had concluded the package did not contain explosives and the aircraft was allowed to take off for Philadelphia, its final stop before Chicago.
At 2pm police carried out a further examination of the suspect package in a cargo area and had renewed concerns.
But by late afternoon, detectives appeared confident there was nothing sinister about the device which was loaded on to a helicopter to be taken to the Metropolitan Police’s counter-terrorism command.
Confirmation that it was a viable device came late on Friday.
In the U.S., counter terrorism sources were quoted by CBS News as confirming that 17 minutes was left on the clock of the device found in the UK.
Investigators in Britain are said to be ‘angry and frustrated’ at the leaks surrounding the inquiry from the U.S. which they described as ‘damaging and counter productive’.
Meanwhile, German intelligence sources disclosed the plane had been forced to change schedule and stop in the UK because of the weight of the cargo.
If the plane had flown directly to the US, without stopping in Britain, then the device is likely to have gone off as it approached America.
It is believed French officials were briefed on details of the inquiry following the meeting between Prime Minister David Cameron and French President Nicolas Sarkozy to sign the historic agreement this week heralding a new era of co-operation between the two countries.
UK officials point out it is not the first time the French have released sensitive information on a terror investigation.
Five years ago Mr Sarkozy, then French interior minister, caused a storm when he said a British minister had told him that suspects in the July 7 suicide bombings had been known to the UK.
Investigators believe the ink bomb attack was the work of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in Yemen and orchestrated by one of their leaders, American-born radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki.
He is also said to have masterminded the recruitment of the former British-based Nigerian student Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, who tried to blow up a plane over Detroit on Christmas Day with a PETN-based device hidden in his underwear and triggered by a syringe.
The ink bombs found last Friday and that device are both believed to have been the work of Al Qaeda’s main bombmaker, Saudi-born Ibrahim Hassan Al Asiri, 28, who is also in hiding in Yemen.
The two key Al Qaeda figures were in Yemen until last month with former Guantanamo Bay detainee Jaber Jabran al-Faifi, a 35-year-old Saudi Arabian, who is said to be providing a ‘wealth of intelligence’ after suddenly turning his back on Al Qaeda.
In mid-October, he returned to Saudi Arabia after operating for more than two years in the heart of the Yemen-based terror group said to pose a major threat to Britain and her allies, and revealed details of the plan for Lockerbie-style attacks.
Home Secretary Theresa May speaks at the Royal United Services Institute in London yesterday
radical cleric anwar al-awlaki
Home Secretary Theresa May (left) spoke at the Royal United Services Institute in London yesterday about the threat to the country from young radicalised Britons. Anwar al-Awlaki (right), who preached in the UK between 2002 and 2004, is believed to have orchestrated the ink bomb plot
Last night Transport Secretary Philip Hammond announced that parcels and freight sent from foreign airports to the UK will be graded according to risk in a new league-table of terror threat.
At the ‘extreme’ end of the scale are countries such as Yemen and Somalia where a ban on freight sent from, or passing through, these countries is already in place. At the opposite end of the scale are EU members ‘which already have well-established security regimes.’
Mr Hammond revealed his plans after a meeting with leading airlines including British Airways, Virgin Atlantic, BMI and easyJet, airport operators and parcel and freight companies such as Royal Mail, TNT and FedEx.
Key airline routes no longer allowed to pass through UK with unscreened transit cargo include British Airways flights from Dhaka to Heathrow and Gatwick and BMI flights from Tehran to Heathrow.
SPECIAL REPORT: The 'DIY jihadists' paid for by us
By SUE REID
They refuse to apologise for their vile rant at the Old Bailey that made a mockery of our justice system.
Nor are they repentant over supporting the radical Muslim woman on trial there for trying to kill an MP by slipping a knife into his stomach.
As 21-year-old London University student Roshonara Choudhry was sentenced to life on Wednesday, they cursed the judge from the public gallery and hurled abuse at a terrified female juror wearing a Muslim headscarf, screaming ‘Shame on you, sister’.
Muslim protesters outside the Old Bailey
Muslim protesters outside the Old Bailey
Radicals: Mohammed Shamsuddin (left) alongside fellow protestors Abu Yahya and Mohammed Haroon Saleem. The trio attacked the jury and judge inside the Old Bailey courtroom following the sentencing of Roshonara Choudhry this week - and claim it will not be last time that home grown jihadists will fight for their cause
The three agitators were then bundled out of court and, incredibly, were allowed to continue their poisonous rant on the streets. In Islamic robes and with faces twisted in fury, they waved banners saying ‘Islam will dominate the World’, yelled ‘British soldiers must die’, and screamed that the knifed Labour MP, Stephen Timms, should be killed.
Until now, they have been unidentified. But the Mail can reveal their names and that they operate at the centre of a dangerous organisation intent on bringing hard-line Islamic sharia law to Britain and flying the flag of Islam over Downing Street. They warned me that Roshonara Choudhry is only one of hundreds of home-grown ‘DIY jihadists’ – many of them also female and some recently converted to Islam – who are prepared to die as martyrs for that cause.
I met them in a coffee bar in Ilford, east London, after receiving a phone call from an intermediary within the fanatical group Islam4uk. The intermediary offered to let me speak to two of the men who caused such mayhem at the Old Bailey.
One of many: The Muslim extremists that met Sue Reid have said that people see Roshonara Choudhry as a heroine and that numerous people have shown support for her. They also said there are hundreds more like her
One of many: The Muslim extremists that met Sue Reid have said that people see Roshonara Choudhry as a heroine and that numerous people have shown support for her. They also said there are hundreds more like her
I found that both are living on benefits, one claiming to suffer from chronic fatigue disorder, while they orchestrate an Islamic backlash against Britain.
Although both use Islamic pseudonyms – Abu Saalihah and Abu Abdullah – their birth names are Mohammed Shamsuddin and Mohammed Haroon Saleem. As Shamsuddin, 34, told me: ‘There are three million Muslims in the UK, far more than the Government says officially. The reason is that we keep having babies.
‘The majority of Muslims sympathise with our Sister Roshonara. They view her as their heroine now. The Islamic websites and forums are full of messages of support for her and anger at the Old Bailey judge. Men and women are inflamed by the harshness of the sentence she was given.’
Whatever the truth of this, Shamsuddin and Saleem, along with a third radical Abu Yahya (who refused to give his birth name to the Mail) escaped scot free after the Old Bailey outrage despite demands for their arrest for contempt of court from some MPs.
‘We were told by a police officer outside the court that the judge had sent us a message to say “don’t do this again and you’ll be alright”. I would have gone to prison for a week and was surprised I wasn’t sent there. I would happily have done so,’ said Shamsuddin, with a smile playing on his bearded face.
Saleem, 29, added: ‘It is going to happen again, I promise you. We won’t stop. There are plenty of young Muslims who are angry and frustrated. They think they are treated as second-class citizens. They want to take their fight onto the streets of Britain. It is going to get worse after this. The Home Secretary herself has said so.’
The two men are obviously well-educated. Shamsuddin studied at Southampton’s Solent University and ran the Islamic Society there. He was brought up in Kensal Rise, north London, by his Indian parents who came to Britain forty years ago. His father was the head chef at the Bombay Palace, a restaurant near Oxford Street, until his death two years ago.
He was radicalised after inviting Omar Bakri Mohammed (an extremist Muslim cleric who has now been banned from Britain) to speak at the university. ‘He changed my life forever,’ he says.
Shamsuddin now has four children, three girls and a boy. Two of them go to private schools at a cost of £2,000 a year each, although he is living off benefits at a family house in Walthamstow.
Saleem has four children, two girls and two boys, and lives in Ilford. He too is jobless and claiming benefits. ‘I used to be a quality controller at a meat factory but they laid people off last year. I am looking for another job,’ he told me.
The third Old Bailey agitator, Abu Yahya, 27, is an office administrator who lives in East London. He studied in Britain, in 2003, with the fanatical Anwar al-Awlaki who is linked to the attempted car bombing in Times Square, New York, in May and last Christmas Day’s attempt to explode a bomb on a flight over the U.S.
It was after watching the abhorrent hate-filled sermons by al-Awlaki on the internet that Roshonara Choudhry decided to attack Stephen Timms because he had voted in the Commons for Britain’s war with Iraq. Her Bengali family have, apparently, disowned their daughter and she refused to appear in person at the Old Bailey (saying she did not recognise the British justice system because it was not sharia law) receiving news of her sentence by video link in prison.
When I meet Shamsuddin and Saleem they appear polite, although in line with Islamic custom they refuse to shake my hand. But their conversation is littered with hatred of non-Muslims. The white working class are ‘riff raff’, they say, and non-Muslim women flaunt themselves as sex objects by putting on make up in the morning to attract men. As for the moderate Muslim Council of Britain, that is the puppet of Government ministers.
So why, I ask, did they shout abuse in a British court room at a woman juror from their own community? ‘It was a unanimous verdict so obviously she agreed with the jail sentence for one of her Muslim sisters. It is unacceptable for one Muslim sister to condemn another,’ says Shamsuddin.
They may speak in moderate tones, but it is what they say that shocks. These two radicals have never, so they say, trained at terror camps in Pakistan or Afghanistan. They wouldn’t know how to put a bomb together (although they assure me plenty do and it is only a matter of time before one ‘gets through’).
Yet as they walk the streets of Britain with State money in their pockets and time to preach a divisive creed, it is hard not to conclude they are every bit as dangerous.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...y-explode.html
Al Qaeda planners believed the plane carrying it would have been over the Atlantic or the U.S. mainland when it was primed to go off in a Lockerbie-style attack.
But the plane made an unscheduled refuelling stop at East Midlands Airport because of the weight of its cargo. Such was the expertise of the bombmaker and the sophistication of the device that it took a bomb disposal expert seven attempts to establish that it was viable and defuse it.
A cartridge which was contained in a parcel intercepted by Dubai security officials found in a package onboard a cargo plane coming from Yemen
One of the two mail bombs sent from Yemen last week was defused just 17 minutes before it was set to explode, France's interior minister revealed. Pictured, the cartridge found in a parcel intercepted by Dubai security officials
The parcel included explosive materials hidden inside the ink cartridge and an electric circuit connected to a mobile phone SIM card
The parcel included explosive materials hidden inside the ink cartridge and an electric circuit connected to a mobile phone SIM card
The bomb hidden in a printer cartridge contained 400 grams of the powerful explosive PETN – 50 times more than needed to punch a hole in the aircraft’s skin – and was wired to a mobile phone.
More...
* Extremist website that inspired stabbing of Stephen Timms urges Muslims to 'raise the knife of jihad' to other MPs
* SPECIAL REPORT: The 'DIY jihadists' paid for by us... Roshonara Choudhry supporters are living on benefits
* Pictured moments after 'explosion' forced emergency landing, the Qantas superjumbo with a foot-long hole torn in its wing
* PETER MCKAY: Twisting our fear of terror
The SIM card had been removed so it could not receive calls and the Yemen-based bombmaker set up either the alarm or timer functions to detonate the device.
French Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux said yesterday it had been ‘defused only 17 minutes before the moment it was set to explode’ but did not elaborate.
A Yemeni man walks past a branch of the US package delivery firm UPS in Sana'a where the parcels were originally posted
A Yemeni man walks past a branch of the US package delivery firm UPS in Sana'a where the parcels were originally posted
Al Qaeda had carried out a ‘dry run’ to see how long the package would take to arrive in the U.S.
According to U.S. intelligence, the test run in mid-September involved a package containing books, a computer disc and religious literature, but no explosives. The aim was to allow bombmakers to work out the timing to trigger the device so it would cause maximum damage.
The explosive concerned, PETN, is a variation of Semtex, the material used to bring down Pan Am 103 over the Scottish town killing 270 people in Britain’s worst act of terrorism.
Home Secretary Theresa May likened the plot in a speech on Wednesday to Lockerbie and said : ‘It could have destroyed the aircraft on which it was being carried, over the UK, over the U.S. or on the ground.
‘The specifics of this attack – notably the type of device and how it was concealed – were new to us. The principle of the attack – a device placed in unaccompanied baggage – was not. It bears some resemblance to the attack on Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie in 1988.’
The flight originated in Yemen and went via Cologne, Germany. It had been due to fly straight on to Chicago but the schedule was changed because the cargo was too heavy to complete the transatlantic leg, so it stopped at East Midlands to refuel.
It was during the journey that the Saudi Arabian authorities provided intelligence from a former Al Qaeda fighter, who days earlier had been spirited out of Yemen and become a ‘supergrass’, to the CIA that two printer bombs were among cargo packages on their way to the U.S.
Addressed to synagogues in President Barack Obama’s home city of Chicago, one was found in Dubai and defused.
The second was found and made safe at East Midlands airport, but only after the suspect package was examined seven times to see whether it was a bomb.
Enlarge Timetable of near-tragedy graphic
Initially, it was thought to be a dummy package’ and described as ‘negative’. But after the confirmation of a viable device in Dubai and, intelligences sources said yesterday, precise information of where explosives had been hidden in that device, the UK package was made safe.
While the aircraft was taken to a remote area and much of the cargo unloaded, the airport continued to function with the runway in regular use.
Both bombs had been attached to a syringe containing lead azide, a chemical initiator that would have detonated the PETN explosive packed into the printer cartridge.
Mr Hortefeux suggested yesterday that disaster had been just minutes away when he told told France’s state-run France-2 television: ‘One of the packages was defused only 17 minutes before the moment that it was set to explode.’
While police, government and intelligence sources in Britain refused to comment publicly, privately a number of senior security sources disputed the claim, saying they ‘did not recognise’ the 17-minute figure and stressing that tests were still taking place on the device.
Newark: A bomb squad officer carries a package away from a UPS cargo plane as the plane and its contents are searched in Newark
A bomb squad officer carries a package away from a UPS cargo plane as the plane and its contents are searched in Newark, New Jersey last week
However, when challenged, French officials repeated the time and said that the device referred to had been the one at East Midlands airport.
POLICE NEEDED SEVEN CHECKS
The revelation that Scotland Yard counter terrorism experts realised the suspect package was a ‘viable bomb’ only after they examined it for a seventh time is a chilling reminder of how near Al Qaeda came to causing carnage.
The drama started at 3.28am last Friday when Leicestershire police found a suspect package in a sealed cargo container on the UPS plane which landed at East Midlands airport for refuelling.
Within hours, the Metropolitan Police had joined the operation. By 10am, tests had concluded the package did not contain explosives and the aircraft was allowed to take off for Philadelphia, its final stop before Chicago.
At 2pm police carried out a further examination of the suspect package in a cargo area and had renewed concerns.
But by late afternoon, detectives appeared confident there was nothing sinister about the device which was loaded on to a helicopter to be taken to the Metropolitan Police’s counter-terrorism command.
Confirmation that it was a viable device came late on Friday.
In the U.S., counter terrorism sources were quoted by CBS News as confirming that 17 minutes was left on the clock of the device found in the UK.
Investigators in Britain are said to be ‘angry and frustrated’ at the leaks surrounding the inquiry from the U.S. which they described as ‘damaging and counter productive’.
Meanwhile, German intelligence sources disclosed the plane had been forced to change schedule and stop in the UK because of the weight of the cargo.
If the plane had flown directly to the US, without stopping in Britain, then the device is likely to have gone off as it approached America.
It is believed French officials were briefed on details of the inquiry following the meeting between Prime Minister David Cameron and French President Nicolas Sarkozy to sign the historic agreement this week heralding a new era of co-operation between the two countries.
UK officials point out it is not the first time the French have released sensitive information on a terror investigation.
Five years ago Mr Sarkozy, then French interior minister, caused a storm when he said a British minister had told him that suspects in the July 7 suicide bombings had been known to the UK.
Investigators believe the ink bomb attack was the work of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in Yemen and orchestrated by one of their leaders, American-born radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki.
He is also said to have masterminded the recruitment of the former British-based Nigerian student Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, who tried to blow up a plane over Detroit on Christmas Day with a PETN-based device hidden in his underwear and triggered by a syringe.
The ink bombs found last Friday and that device are both believed to have been the work of Al Qaeda’s main bombmaker, Saudi-born Ibrahim Hassan Al Asiri, 28, who is also in hiding in Yemen.
The two key Al Qaeda figures were in Yemen until last month with former Guantanamo Bay detainee Jaber Jabran al-Faifi, a 35-year-old Saudi Arabian, who is said to be providing a ‘wealth of intelligence’ after suddenly turning his back on Al Qaeda.
In mid-October, he returned to Saudi Arabia after operating for more than two years in the heart of the Yemen-based terror group said to pose a major threat to Britain and her allies, and revealed details of the plan for Lockerbie-style attacks.
Home Secretary Theresa May speaks at the Royal United Services Institute in London yesterday
radical cleric anwar al-awlaki
Home Secretary Theresa May (left) spoke at the Royal United Services Institute in London yesterday about the threat to the country from young radicalised Britons. Anwar al-Awlaki (right), who preached in the UK between 2002 and 2004, is believed to have orchestrated the ink bomb plot
Last night Transport Secretary Philip Hammond announced that parcels and freight sent from foreign airports to the UK will be graded according to risk in a new league-table of terror threat.
At the ‘extreme’ end of the scale are countries such as Yemen and Somalia where a ban on freight sent from, or passing through, these countries is already in place. At the opposite end of the scale are EU members ‘which already have well-established security regimes.’
Mr Hammond revealed his plans after a meeting with leading airlines including British Airways, Virgin Atlantic, BMI and easyJet, airport operators and parcel and freight companies such as Royal Mail, TNT and FedEx.
Key airline routes no longer allowed to pass through UK with unscreened transit cargo include British Airways flights from Dhaka to Heathrow and Gatwick and BMI flights from Tehran to Heathrow.
SPECIAL REPORT: The 'DIY jihadists' paid for by us
By SUE REID
They refuse to apologise for their vile rant at the Old Bailey that made a mockery of our justice system.
Nor are they repentant over supporting the radical Muslim woman on trial there for trying to kill an MP by slipping a knife into his stomach.
As 21-year-old London University student Roshonara Choudhry was sentenced to life on Wednesday, they cursed the judge from the public gallery and hurled abuse at a terrified female juror wearing a Muslim headscarf, screaming ‘Shame on you, sister’.
Muslim protesters outside the Old Bailey
Muslim protesters outside the Old Bailey
Radicals: Mohammed Shamsuddin (left) alongside fellow protestors Abu Yahya and Mohammed Haroon Saleem. The trio attacked the jury and judge inside the Old Bailey courtroom following the sentencing of Roshonara Choudhry this week - and claim it will not be last time that home grown jihadists will fight for their cause
The three agitators were then bundled out of court and, incredibly, were allowed to continue their poisonous rant on the streets. In Islamic robes and with faces twisted in fury, they waved banners saying ‘Islam will dominate the World’, yelled ‘British soldiers must die’, and screamed that the knifed Labour MP, Stephen Timms, should be killed.
Until now, they have been unidentified. But the Mail can reveal their names and that they operate at the centre of a dangerous organisation intent on bringing hard-line Islamic sharia law to Britain and flying the flag of Islam over Downing Street. They warned me that Roshonara Choudhry is only one of hundreds of home-grown ‘DIY jihadists’ – many of them also female and some recently converted to Islam – who are prepared to die as martyrs for that cause.
I met them in a coffee bar in Ilford, east London, after receiving a phone call from an intermediary within the fanatical group Islam4uk. The intermediary offered to let me speak to two of the men who caused such mayhem at the Old Bailey.
One of many: The Muslim extremists that met Sue Reid have said that people see Roshonara Choudhry as a heroine and that numerous people have shown support for her. They also said there are hundreds more like her
One of many: The Muslim extremists that met Sue Reid have said that people see Roshonara Choudhry as a heroine and that numerous people have shown support for her. They also said there are hundreds more like her
I found that both are living on benefits, one claiming to suffer from chronic fatigue disorder, while they orchestrate an Islamic backlash against Britain.
Although both use Islamic pseudonyms – Abu Saalihah and Abu Abdullah – their birth names are Mohammed Shamsuddin and Mohammed Haroon Saleem. As Shamsuddin, 34, told me: ‘There are three million Muslims in the UK, far more than the Government says officially. The reason is that we keep having babies.
‘The majority of Muslims sympathise with our Sister Roshonara. They view her as their heroine now. The Islamic websites and forums are full of messages of support for her and anger at the Old Bailey judge. Men and women are inflamed by the harshness of the sentence she was given.’
Whatever the truth of this, Shamsuddin and Saleem, along with a third radical Abu Yahya (who refused to give his birth name to the Mail) escaped scot free after the Old Bailey outrage despite demands for their arrest for contempt of court from some MPs.
‘We were told by a police officer outside the court that the judge had sent us a message to say “don’t do this again and you’ll be alright”. I would have gone to prison for a week and was surprised I wasn’t sent there. I would happily have done so,’ said Shamsuddin, with a smile playing on his bearded face.
Saleem, 29, added: ‘It is going to happen again, I promise you. We won’t stop. There are plenty of young Muslims who are angry and frustrated. They think they are treated as second-class citizens. They want to take their fight onto the streets of Britain. It is going to get worse after this. The Home Secretary herself has said so.’
The two men are obviously well-educated. Shamsuddin studied at Southampton’s Solent University and ran the Islamic Society there. He was brought up in Kensal Rise, north London, by his Indian parents who came to Britain forty years ago. His father was the head chef at the Bombay Palace, a restaurant near Oxford Street, until his death two years ago.
He was radicalised after inviting Omar Bakri Mohammed (an extremist Muslim cleric who has now been banned from Britain) to speak at the university. ‘He changed my life forever,’ he says.
Shamsuddin now has four children, three girls and a boy. Two of them go to private schools at a cost of £2,000 a year each, although he is living off benefits at a family house in Walthamstow.
Saleem has four children, two girls and two boys, and lives in Ilford. He too is jobless and claiming benefits. ‘I used to be a quality controller at a meat factory but they laid people off last year. I am looking for another job,’ he told me.
The third Old Bailey agitator, Abu Yahya, 27, is an office administrator who lives in East London. He studied in Britain, in 2003, with the fanatical Anwar al-Awlaki who is linked to the attempted car bombing in Times Square, New York, in May and last Christmas Day’s attempt to explode a bomb on a flight over the U.S.
It was after watching the abhorrent hate-filled sermons by al-Awlaki on the internet that Roshonara Choudhry decided to attack Stephen Timms because he had voted in the Commons for Britain’s war with Iraq. Her Bengali family have, apparently, disowned their daughter and she refused to appear in person at the Old Bailey (saying she did not recognise the British justice system because it was not sharia law) receiving news of her sentence by video link in prison.
When I meet Shamsuddin and Saleem they appear polite, although in line with Islamic custom they refuse to shake my hand. But their conversation is littered with hatred of non-Muslims. The white working class are ‘riff raff’, they say, and non-Muslim women flaunt themselves as sex objects by putting on make up in the morning to attract men. As for the moderate Muslim Council of Britain, that is the puppet of Government ministers.
So why, I ask, did they shout abuse in a British court room at a woman juror from their own community? ‘It was a unanimous verdict so obviously she agreed with the jail sentence for one of her Muslim sisters. It is unacceptable for one Muslim sister to condemn another,’ says Shamsuddin.
They may speak in moderate tones, but it is what they say that shocks. These two radicals have never, so they say, trained at terror camps in Pakistan or Afghanistan. They wouldn’t know how to put a bomb together (although they assure me plenty do and it is only a matter of time before one ‘gets through’).
Yet as they walk the streets of Britain with State money in their pockets and time to preach a divisive creed, it is hard not to conclude they are every bit as dangerous.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...y-explode.html