- An astonishing claim that M16 recruited Muslim extremists
in Britain for terror training abroad has been made by Oldham MP and former
cabinet minister Michael Meacher.
-
- Mr Meacher also suggest that a British Muslim held under
sentenced of death in Pakistan for beheading a US journalist is being kept
alive because he was a British double agent.
-
- The Oldham West and Royton MP makes these sensational
claims in an article for Asian News' sister paper, The Guardian.
-
- The former Environment Secretary claims that Britain's
'overseas' security organisation, M16, set about recruiting UK Muslims
directing them to support US efforts to overthrow communist governments
in Afghanistan and Yugoslavia. He highlights a Delhi-based research foundation
that estimates anything up to 200 UK Muslims could have undergone training
in overseas terrorist camps under the protection of the Pakistani secret
service, the ISI, who were backing the armed Islamic insurrection against
the Afghan communist regime and its Soviet backers.
-
- He writes: "During an interview on Fox TV this summer,
the former US federal prosecutor John Loftus reported that the British
intelligence had used the al-Muhajiroun group..to recruit Islamist militants
with British passports for the war against the Serbs in Kosovo."
-
- The now disbanded al-Muhajiroun group held meetings in
Manchester after 9/11 praising the courage of the suicide bombers and claimed
to be helping UK Muslims to fight US troops in Afghanistan.
-
- Mr Meacher also highlights the case of UK-born Muslim
Omar Saeed Sheikh, sentenced to death for the murder of US journalist Daniel
Pearl in 2002.
-
- Mr Meacher writes that Sheikh has been allowed 32 appeals
against his sentence, the last being adjourned "indefinitely".
He says the same Delhi foundation describes Sheikh as a British agent.
-
- Mr Meacher adds: "This is all the more remarkable
when this is the same Omar Sheikh who, at the behest of General Mahmood
Ahmed, head of the ISI, wired $100,000 to Mohammed Atta, the leading 9/11
hijacker, before the New York attacks, as confirmed by Dennis Lomel, director
of FBI's financial crimes unit."
-
- Mr Meacher's argument is that the UK and US security
service do not want a proper investigation into these links because it
would expose how they encouraged and helped to recruit Islamic 'warriors'
when it suited their purposes but that these same forces eventually turned
on the west, inflamed by what they saw as anti-Islamic occupations and
pro-Israeli international policies.
-
- Read the full Guardian article below -
-
- Oldham MP Michael Meacher argues Britain's security services
helped to create Islamic warriors who eventually bit back against the west
-
- The videotape of the suicide bomber Mohammad Sidique
Khan has switched the focus of the London bombings away from the establishment
view of brainwashed, murderous individuals and highlighted a starker political
reality. While there can be no justification for horrific killings of this
kind, they need to be understood against the ferment of the last decade
radicalising Muslim youth of Pakistani origin living in Europe.
-
- During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s,
the US funded large numbers of jihadists through Pakistan's secret intelligence
service, the ISI. Later the US wanted to raise another jihadi corps, again
using proxies, to help Bosnian Muslims fight to weaken the Serb government's
hold on Yugoslavia. Those they turned to included Pakistanis in Britain.
-
- According to a recent report by the Delhi-based Observer
Research Foundation, a contingent was also sent by the Pakistani government,
then led by Benazir Bhutto, at the request of the Clinton administration.
This contingent was formed from the Harkat-ul- Ansar (HUA) terrorist group
and trained by the ISI. The report estimates that about 200 Pakistani Muslims
living in the UK went to Pakistan, trained in HUA camps and joined the
HUA's contingent in Bosnia. Most significantly, this was "with the
full knowledge and complicity of the British and American intelligence
agencies".
-
- As the 2002 Dutch government report on Bosnia makes clear,
the US provided a green light to groups on the state department list of
terrorist organisations, including the Lebanese-based Hizbullah, to operate
in Bosnia - an episode that calls into question the credibility of the
subsequent "war on terror".
-
- For nearly a decade the US helped Islamist insurgents
linked to Chechnya, Iran and Saudi Arabia destabilise the former Yugoslavia.
The insurgents were also allowed to move further east to Kosovo. By the
end of the fighting in Bosnia there were tens of thousands of Islamist
insurgents in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo; many then moved west to Austria,
Germany and Switzerland.
-
- Less well known is evidence of the British government's
relationship with a wider Islamist terrorist network. During an interview
on Fox TV this summer, the former US federal prosecutor John Loftus reported
that British intelligence had used the al-Muhajiroun group in London to
recruit Islamist militants with British passports for the war against the
Serbs in Kosovo.
-
- Since July Scotland Yard has been interested in an alleged
member of al-Muhajiroun, Haroon Rashid Aswat, who some sources have suggested
could have been behind the London bombings.
-
- According to Loftus, Aswat was detained in Pakistan after
leaving Britain, but was released after 24 hours. He was subsequently returned
to Britain from Zambia, but has been detained solely for extradition to
the US, not for questioning about the London bombings. Loftus claimed that
Aswat is a British-backed double agent, pursued by the police but protected
by MI6.
-
- One British Muslim of Pakistani origin radicalised by
the civil war in Yugoslavia was LSE-educated Omar Saeed Sheikh. He is now
in jail in Pakistan under sentence of death for the killing of the US journalist
Daniel Pearl in 2002 - although many (including Pearl's widow and the US
authorities) doubt that he committed the murder. However, reports from
Pakistan suggest that Sheikh continues to be active from jail, keeping
in touch with friends and followers in Britain.
-
- Sheikh was recruited as a student by Jaish-e-Muhammad
(Army of Muhammad), which operates a network in Britain. It has actively
recruited Britons from universities and colleges since the early 1990s,
and has boasted of its numerous British Muslim volunteers. Investigations
in Pakistan have suggested that on his visits there Shehzad Tanweer, one
of the London suicide bombers, contacted members of two outlawed local
groups and trained at two camps in Karachi and near Lahore.
-
- Indeed the network of groups now being uncovered in Pakistan
may point to senior al-Qaida operatives having played a part in selecting
members of the bombers' cell. The Observer Research Foundation has argued
that there are even "grounds to suspect that the [London] blasts were
orchestrated by Omar Sheikh from his jail in Pakistan".
-
- Why then is Omar Sheikh not being dealt with when he
is already under sentence of death? Astonishingly his appeal to a higher
court against the sentence was adjourned in July for the 32nd time and
has since been adjourned indefinitely. This is all the more remarkable
when this is the same Omar Sheikh who, at the behest of General Mahmood
Ahmed, head of the ISI, wired $100,000 to Mohammed Atta, the leading 9/11
hijacker, before the New York attacks, as confirmed by Dennis Lormel, director
of FBI's financial crimes unit.
-
- Yet neither Ahmed nor Omar appears to have been sought
for questioning by the US about 9/11. Indeed, the official 9/11 Commission
Report of July 2004 sought to downplay the role of Pakistan with the comment:
"To date, the US government has not been able to determine the origin
of the money used for the 9/11 attacks. Ultimately the question is of little
practical significance" - a statement of breathtaking disingenuousness.
-
- All this highlights the resistance to getting at the
truth about the 9/11 attacks and to an effective crackdown on the forces
fomenting terrorist bombings in the west, including Britain. The extraordinary
US forbearance towards Omar Sheikh, its restraint towards the father of
Pakistan's atomic bomb, Dr AQ Khan, selling nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya
and North Korea, the huge US military assistance to Pakistan and the US
decision last year to designate Pakistan as a major non-Nato ally in south
Asia all betoken a deeper strategic set of goals as the real priority in
its relationship with Pakistan. These might be surmised as Pakistan providing
sizeable military contingents for Iraq to replace US troops, or Pakistani
troops replacing Nato forces in Afghanistan. Or it could involve the use
of Pakistani military bases for US intervention in Iran, or strengthening
Pakistan as a base in relation to India and China.
-
- Whether the hunt for those behind the London bombers
can prevail against these powerful political forces remains to be seen.
Indeed it may depend on whether Scotland Yard, in its attempts to uncover
the truth, can prevail over MI6, which is trying to cover its tracks and
in practice has every opportunity to operate beyond the law under the cover
of national security.
-
- First published by the Asian News
-
- © Copyright 2005 Guardian Media Group
|
