Part II of a two-part article. Read Part I.
In 1994, the Indian High Commissioner, L. M. Singhvi, claimed that Muslim students at British colleges and universities were being recruited by Islamist terror groups in India. The London School of Economics and the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies were claimed to be places where students were particularly susceptible to such recruitment.
After followers of Hizb ut-Tahrir murdered Ayotunde Obanubi on Monday February 27, 1995, at Newham College of Further Education, repercussions ensued. The National Union of Students banned the group from its meetings in the same year. In 1996, Omar Bakri Mohammed either resigned or was expelled from the British Hizb ut-Tahrir group which he had founded.
Hizb ut-Tahrir continued to campaign on campuses, intimidating Muslim women into wearing veils, but it was not allowed to speak publicly or hold meetings in student union buildings. With Bakri no longer an active member, the group promoted itself as a "non-violent" organization, even though it remained virulently anti-semitic and opposed to democracy.
Bakri took his most violent and extremist members from Hizb ut-Tahrir and officially founded British Al-Muhajiroun in February 1996. Bakri took on the role of "Emir" or "spiritual leader", while his deputy was Anjem Choudary, a former lawyer.
The Institute for Counter-Terrorism last month reported on a recent conversation (in Arabic) between Bakri and the newspaper Asharq Alawsat. Here he said that Al Muhajiroun targeted more than 48 different universities in Britain, including Cambridge, Oxford, Durham, the LSE, Imperial College, Westminster University, and King's College. This figure is twice the amount claimed by Professor Anthony Glees in his 2005 study "When Students Turn To Terror".
The London School of Economics, according to a 2002 report, was certainly a locus for Islamist terror recruitment. In a report by UK intelligence, it was claimed that Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, who had became a student at the LSE in 1992, went to Bosnia in 1993 and the following year became involved in Kashmiri terrorist groups, including Jaish-e-Mohammed. He was arrested in 1994 after a police shoot-out following the kidnapping of three British backpackers. He escaped from jail in 1999, and was captured by Pakistani police on February 12, 2002. Omar Sheikh was captured for his involvement in the kidnapping and beheading of US journalist Daniel Pearl, and given a death sentence on July 15, 2002.
Bizarrely, President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan states in his recent book "In The Line Of Fire" that Omar Sheikh had been originally recruited by Britain's international intelligence agency, MI6. Omar Sheikh admits to meeting Osama bin Laden twice, but claims his allegiance is more to Mullah Omar of the Taliban. Omar Sheikh is said to have financed the 9/11 terrorist, Mohammed Atta.
The 2002 intelligence report claims that another student from the LSE recruited for Jaish-e-Mohammed, and a third man who was arrested for involvement in the 2001 attack upon the Indian parliament (killing seven) actually lectured to Muslim students at the LSE in 1999.
An official at the LSE claimed: "There was some activity in the mid-1990s. Together with the students' union we checked that only bona fide students were actually linked to the Islamic society." In 2000, members of Al-Muhajiroun were physically expelled from a freshers' fair at the LSE after trying to recruit students.
Al-Muhajiroun declared that there was a "covenant of security" between British Muslims and the UK, which meant that while Muslims were allowed to operate there would be no terrorist attacks on British soil. In 2005, the Sunday Times stated that more than a dozen Al-Muhajiroun members had gone on to become suicide bombers abroad. These included Asif
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