UK: How Britain encouraged Islamic radicalism

At the Old Bailey in London on April 30, five men were jailed for life for conspiring to cause explosions likely to endanger life. At a storage depot, Access Self-Storage in Hanwell in west London, the men had placed a a 600 kilogram (1,320 pounds) bag containing ammonium nitrate fertilizer, an ingredient of explosives. The group had intended to attack several targets, including a shopping mall, a nightclub, trains and even planes. Only one of the men attended the court to hear his sentence - 23-year old Jawad Akbar (extreme right in the picture). When he first suggested the plot to attack the Ministry of Sound nightclub, Akbar had said: "No one can even turn around and say 'oh they were innocent' - those slags dancing around."

On June 16, 2006, the Old Bailey court had heard surveillance tapes in which Akbar had discussed intentions to attack airplanes with Omar Khyam, who was described in court as the leader of the cell. Khyam said: "Imagine you've got a plane, 300 people in it, you buy tickets for 30 brothers in there. They're massive brothers, you just crash the plane. You could do it easy, it's just an idea." Jawad Akbar replied: "Thirty brothers, to find 30 brothers willing to commit suicide is a big thing." Khyam answered: "If you spoke to some serious brothers, to the right people, you'd probably get it bro. whether they were from abroad, you'd get it....as soon as an air marshal gets up and shoots one the others just jump him... Thirty brothers on a British Airways flight got up -19 were split up in four planes. Thirty brothers on a plane, the beauty of it is they don't have to fly into a building, just crash the flipping thing."

In an operation code-named "Crevice", the group had been monitored by MI5 and police for a year prior to their arrest on March 30, 2004. Reporting restrictions were lifted at the end of the trial. MI5 was known to have tracked Mohammed Sidique Khan, leader of the cell which had carried out the 7/7 bombings which killed 52 people on July 7, 2005. They had not assumed him to be a serious terror threat. It emerged that in February and March 2004, Khan and also Shehzad Tanweer, another 7/7 suicide bomber, had been monitored meeting Omar Khyam, the leader of the Crevice Group, on four occasions.

The five convicted members of Crevice had been members of Al Muhajiroun. This group had been formed in 1996 from activists within the UK branch of the international Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir. Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed had founded both the UK Hizb branch and Al Muhajiroun.

On Thursday February 23, 1995, Bakri had given a lecture to Muslim students attending Newham College of Further Education in east London. Four days later, a group of Muslim students at the college, members of Hizb ut-Tahrir, confronted a Nigerian student at the college entrance. This student, Ayotunde David Obanubi, was accused of "insulting" Islam. Apparently he had been disrespectful of Ramadan, Islam's holy month.

Around 1pm, about 15 students armed with knives, machetes and hammers attacked him. Obanubi was struck on the head with a hammer, and a knife pierced his heart. He died on the spot. His death was the first known instance of Muslim fanatics killing someone on British soil for "religious" reasons, and should have been a wake-up call to the UK authorities. Britain at that time was under weak leadership. Tory premier John Major had little control of his party, and the Newham event was regarded