NEWS > 04 September 2006

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International Herald Tribune -
04 September 2006

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Police used Islamic site for t

In a strange twist to Britain's newest terrorism scare, a regional police force admitted Monday that it had sent officers for diversity training at an Islamic school in the British countryside that is at the center of a search for facilities nurturing Islamic radicals.

In a statement, the Sussex police said the Jameah Islameah school south of London "has been used by officers and staff undergoing advanced training for their role as diversity trainers to the rest of the work force," adding, "This has involved a series of one-day visits to the schools by groups of two or three trainers on up to 15 occasions over more than a year."

The statement cast an ambiguous light on other police actions since 14 people were arrested overnight Friday in what the police described as a hunt for terrorist recruiters and trainers. Within hours of the arrests, the police sealed off the Jameah Islameah school, located in a former convent and ballet school in rural East Sussex, and began to search its grounds.

On Sunday, a court gave the police permission to continue holding 3 of the 14 people until Wednesday. It said the other 11 could be held until Friday.

The search of the school grounds continued Monday. Its principal, Bilal Patel, has said that, some years ago, Abu Hamza al-Masri, a cleric now serving a prison term for soliciting murder and inciting racial hatred, had used the school's weekend camp grounds. But Patel said he had asked Masri not to return.

It was not the first time the school had been linked to allegations associated with terrorism. A report in the local Kent and Sussex Courier in January 1999 quoted the local police as saying they were baffled by suggestions that the school's camping facilities may have been used by five Britons held in Yemen and accused of planning terrorist attacks.

The foreign secretary at the time, the late Robin Cook, said in Parliament that the purported link to the five detainees in Yemen had been investigated and no British laws had been broken.

Separately, the authorities in the United States are seeking the extradition of Masri on charges related to the kidnapping of 16 hostages, including two Americans, in Yemen at around the same time.

While speculation about the school's status had imparted an air of mystery to its operations, the Sussex police force insisted it was not embarrassed.

The school's facilities in Islamic instruction, a police statement said, had allowed officers to "take advantage of the resources available to us in the community to improve our knowledge and awareness of the many diverse communities that we serve in Sussex."

The Daily Mirror, which first reported the story in its Monday editions, teased the police, suggesting that while police personnel "studied the Koran, members of an alleged suicide bomber terrorist cell were being trained for martyrdom almost under their noses."

Initial news reports said most of the people arrested over the weekend were Britons of Pakistani descent. But other reports Monday said some of them may have been converts from Christianity. British newspapers said the detainees included Abu Abdullah, an associate of the jailed Masri. Calls to Abdullah's two cellphones went unanswered.

Police officials have said the school is part of an inquiry into terrorist training and recruitment unrelated to any specific conspiracy such as the alleged plot to bomb trans-Atlantic airliners that was uncovered Aug. 10. There have been no arrests among the school's staff.

On Monday, a court returned eight of the people held since Aug. 10 to prison to await trial, which may not get underway until 2008.

Of those held Aug. 10, 11 have been charged with conspiracy to murder and planning to bomb airliners and 4 have been accused of lesser crimes. Five more people are being held without charge until Wednesday, when they will have spent the maximum 28 days in detention permitted under law.

The mounting number of people in detention is only one facet of what Prime Minister Tony Blair depicts as an "elemental" battle with terrorism, fought on other fronts in places such as Afghanistan and Iraq, where Britain has sent thousands of troops in support of American and NATO forces.

The cost of those deployments is becoming evident, both in a mounting death toll and in a debate over whether British forces are overstretched fighting on several fronts.

In an interview with The Guardian on Monday, Britain's chief of staff, General Richard Dannatt, said British forces were "running hot, certainly running hot. Can we cope? I pause. I say: just."

The general, who took over the position last week, urged a "national debate" over the scale of Britain's defense spending. At the same time, Kim Howells, a Foreign Office minister visiting Afghanistan, said Britain was doing "more than its share of what is required in Afghanistan," the Press Association reported, and urged other NATO countries to do more.

The remarks coincided with new fatalities, in addition to the 14 British military personnel who died when a reconnaissance plane crashed in Afghanistan over the weekend. One British soldier died in a suicide attack on a NATO convoy in Kabul, while two more British troops died near Basra in southern Iraq.

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Article sourced from

International Herald Tribune -04 September 2006

Police used Islamic site for t

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International Herald Tribune -
04 September 2006