...British Connection...

British connection to the Mumbai attacks would be no surprise
Posted By: Philip Johnston at Nov 28, 2008 at 13:12:25 [General]
Posted in: Politics , Three Line Whip
Tags:
British connection, Islamists, Mumbai, pakistan, terrorism
The suggestion that some British nationals may be involved in the terrorist attacks in Mumbai confirms the worldwide nature of the terrorist web whose poisonous spiders lurk in the lawless northern regions of Pakistan.Intelligence officials in the UK say there is no evidence yet to confirm this but it would not be surprising if it were true.
British nationals with Pakistani backgrounds have been involved in many terrorist incidents, both in this country and abroad.
The first indications that radicalised British Muslims were travelling abroad to fight emerged from Bosnia in the mid-1990s. In 1998, British casualties were reported among the dead in mujahideen camps in Afghanistan attacked by American missiles.
In 2002, the American journalist Daniel Pearl was kidnapped and murdered in Pakistan by Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh. Originally from east London, he attended a British public school before dropping out of the LSE.
Another British-born Muslim extremist, belonging to the Pakistani-based militant organisation Jaish-i-Muhamnmad, killed 32 people when he rammed a lorry packed with explosives into an Indian army barracks in Kashmir.
In 2003, two other British, Asif Mohammed Hanif and Omar Sharif, travelled to Tel Aviv to carry out a suicide bomb attack there.
One thing that all had in common, apart from their faith, is that they attended mosques or events in Britain where fundamentalist messages were routinely issued. They also had family links with Pakistan which made it easier for them to travel to the country where they would be trained by jihadists. They had already been radicalised at home. An estimated 400,000 trips a year are made by Britons of Pakistani origin to their ancestral homeland.
While radicalised Islamists may have attended mainstream schools, they do so in the company of other Muslims. After school, they may have special Koranic classes. They go to mosques where preachers extol the glories of jihad. They belong to a stratum of our society that disavows the mainstream culture and is often divorced from it. They own their greater allegiance to their faith and to politics than to Britain.
If it turns out that British citizens were involved, MI5 will at least hope that they have had their suspicions about them otherwise this would mean they are entirely 'off radar.'
However, if the security service did know about them the question will then arise as to whether any information about them was handed over to the Pakistanis and, if so, whether it was acted upon.
More to the point, if a British connection is confirmed, everyone will wonder why Scotland Yard's counter-terroism command has the time to arrest and question a Tory MP for embarrassing the government over immigration when its principal task is tracking those who are a real risk to the security of this nation and of others.

From : Telegraph (London)