http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1380564/35-radicals-trained-terrorism-British-mosques-Guantanamo-files-reveal.htmlBritain's mosques became an international haven for extremists who enjoyed state benefits while being trained for terrorism, leaked documents show.
The WikiLeaks files, written by U.S. military chiefs, reveal that at least 35 Guantanamo terrorists were radicalised in London mosques before being sent to fight against the West.
This is believed to be more than any other Western country.
Implicated: The files point to the crucial role of London-based preachers such as Abu Hamza, above, in indoctrinating extremists.
Of these, just 17 were British nationals or had been granted asylum, while 18 had travelled from abroad – cementing Britain’s reputation as a global training camp for terrorists.
U.S. intelligence officers describe Finsbury Park mosque, in North London, as a ‘haven for Islamic extremists from Morocco and Algeria’ and ‘an attack planning and propaganda production base’.
After their UK trip they were then flown to Pakistan and Afghanistan where they were taught to fight and make bombs. The leaked documents also show that an Al Qaeda ‘assassin’ accused of bombing two churches and a luxury hotel in Pakistan was at the same time working for MI6.
Adil Hadi al Jazairi Bin Hamlili was captured in 2003 and sent to Guantanamo Bay where interrogators were convinced that he was an informer for British intelligence.
U.S. intelligence reports describe the 35-year-old Algerian citizen as a ‘facilitator, courier, kidnapper, and assassin for Al Qaeda’. CIA interrogators found him ‘to have withheld important information from …British Secret Intelligence Service … and to be a threat to U.S. and allied personnel in Afghanistan and Pakistan’.
He has been returned to Algeria but it is not clear whether he will stand trial there.
'Haven for extremists': US intelligence experts describe Finsbury Park Mosque, in north London, above, as an 'attack planning and propaganda production base'.
REVENGE PLOT TO NUKE BRITAIN
Interrogators at Guantanamo Bay uncovered serious plots to unleash chemical and nuclear weapons on the West, the WikiLeaks documents show.
According to detainees’ confessions, Al Qaeda mastermind Kalid Sheikh Mohammed claimed they had hidden a nuclear bomb in Britain which would be detonated if Osama Bin Laden was captured or killed.
Detainees admitted that Mohammed, currently facing trial over the 9/11 terrorist attacks, was involved in a plot to attack U.S. atomic plants and unleash a ‘nuclear hellstorm’.
According to the files, a Libyan detainee and close friend of Bin Laden, Abu Al-Libi, ‘has knowledge of Al Qaeda possibly possessing a nuclear bomb’.
Another told his interrogators the bombers would be ‘Europeans of Arab or Asian descent’.
The WikiLeaks documents, published by the Daily Telegraph, also reveal that 16 detainees sent back to Britain were regarded as ‘high risk’ by the U.S. authorities and capable of plotting acts of terror.
Yet each has been paid £1million of public money by the Government to compensate them for their unlawful detention.
The documents point to the crucial role played by London-based preachers such as Abu Qatada and Abu Hamza in the suspected indoctrination of extremists, before they were dispatched around the world to plot terror attacks. They describe Qatada as ‘the most successful recruiter in Europe’ and ‘a focal point for extremist fundraising [and] recruitment’.
Despite this, the London cleric and Al Qaeda’s chief European agent was paid £2,500 for being ‘unlawfully detained’ by the British Government, after being held indefinitely without trial following 9/11.
A ruling found that keeping him in Belmarsh prison, while he refused to return to his native Jordan, breached his human right to a fair trial. The Government is trying to deport him to Jordan, where he has been sentenced to jail in his absence on terror charges.
Meanwhile, Hamza is named as encouraging ‘his followers to murder non-Muslims’, in the documents, and yet continues to fight deportation to the U.S. because of Europe’s liberal human rights laws.
At least 35 extremists indoctrinated in Britain were held in Guantanamo Bay.
Extradition proceedings began six years ago, but he appealed to Strasbourg on the grounds that this would breach his human right to a fair trial because he would be given an ‘excessive’ sentence. The taxpayer continues to fund his stay in Belmarsh prison while his wife and eight children are claiming £680 a week in benefits and living in a council home in West London.
Three other mosques and an Islamic centre are also highlighted by senior commanders as places where young Muslim men were turned into potential terrorists.
Many obtained EU passports from other European countries such as France, but then travelled on to Britain to take advantage of the generous asylum system. The leaks help explain why U.S. intelligence services regard extremists in Britain as the greatest threat to American security.
The CIA is still so concerned about militant recruitment in the UK that it operates its own intelligence network and recruits its own agents among the Muslim population in Britain.
In a statement, the Pentagon said: ‘The previous and current administrations have made every effort to act with the utmost care and diligence in transferring detainees from Guantanamo.’
Among the inmates, senile man of 89 and a boy of 14.
Only a third of suspects detained at Guantanamo Bay were actually Al Qaeda terrorists, the WikiLeaks documents reveal.
Among the suspects held at the maximum security prison was a senile 89-year-old Afghan man, according to the papers.
The documents also reveal that a farm labourer – a father-of-three – was arrested and imprisoned at the camp for two years simply because his name sounded similar to another suspect linked to the Taliban.
Others among 150 innocent men held captive included a pensioner suffering from dementia and a 14-year-old boy who had been kidnapped and forcibly conscripted into the Taliban.
Of the 779 inmates, 500 men and boys were either innocent or a low-level threat to the West – according to their interrogators.
Others held included farmers, chefs and drivers who were treated as if they were Al Qaeda commanders – and at least 20 children under the age of 18. An Al Jazeera journalist was also held for six years so he could be interrogated about the Arabic news network.
According to the files, which were written by officials at the controversial base, senior U.S. commanders concluded that in dozens of cases there was ‘no reason recorded for transfer’ to Guantanamo. The revelations are hugely embarrassing to the U.S. government and will fuel claims the camp is an affront to human rights.
More than two years after President Obama ordered the closure of the prison, 172 suspects are still being held there.
172 suspects are still being held in Guantanamo two years after Barack Obama ordered its closure.
The files revealed Guantanamo’s terrible toll on innocent lives.
An illiterate farm labourer, who did not even know his own age, was imprisoned in the detention camp for two years.
Mohammed Nasim, who worked as a wood gatherer, was arrested on his way to celebrate Eid in his brother’s village, because his name sounded ‘similar’ to that of a Taliban informant.
The father-of-three was cleared almost two years later, according to the leaked files.
His U.S. case assessment stated: ‘The detainee does not appear to be a member of the Taliban or Al Qaeda and its global terrorism network. He is not considered an enemy combatant.’
Around 20 children have been detained at Guantanamo, including one as young as 14. Several had already suffered brutal treatment at the hands of the Taliban. Naqib Ullah was 14 when he was gang-raped and kidnapped by men working for a Taliban warlord.
He was captured by U.S. troops in a raid and shipped to Guantanamo Bay where he was held for more than a year. An intelligence report describes him as a ‘kidnap victim and a forced conscript of a local warring tribe’.
One 9/11 plotter told interrogators that Al Qaeda was seeking to recruit ground staff at Heathrow airport to assist in terrorist attacks.
The British Government has paid out millions to those held in the camp and launched an independent inquiry to investigate allegations that British spies were complicit in torture.
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