Intelligence

Times Online - Newspaper Edition

Times Online - Newspaper Edition

IT WAS just before dawn last Thursday when armed officers from Scotland Yard’s anti-terrorist branch swooped on the home of Sajid Badat and his parents in the maze of narrow streets around Gloucester city centre.
The quiet, hard-working student, who appeared to his friends and family as a devout young Muslim and the “bright star” of his local mosque, was now a suspected terrorist.

David Leppard and Nick Fielding

Within hours police found about a kilogram of PETN, a powerful military-grade explosive that can be moulded into almost any shape.

The operations were part of a nationwide trawl. On the same day detectives arrested a 33-year-old man and raided several addresses in Birmingham.

Badat’s arrest opened a new chapter in Britain’s war on terror. For the first time since the September 11 attacks on America, explosives had been found in the possession of a suspected Islamist terrorist in Britain.

The most senior police officers are now speaking openly of a “panic” in the hunt for the terror cells. They know they are involved in a race against time. They need to find the terrorists before they strike.

As news of the Gloucester raid spread, people who knew Badat expressed surprise. The 24-year-old Asian Briton was born and bred in the West Country cathedral city. His parents, Mohammad and Zubeida, emigrated from their native Malawi more than 25 years ago.

Sajid, the older of their two sons, attended St James Street primary school in Gloucester before going on to the Crypt grammar in nearby Tuffley where he achieved 10 GCSEs and four A-levels, including physics, chemistry and biology. He left school in 1997.

David Lamper, his former headmaster, recalled: “He was a very cheerful, polite boy who worked very hard and got some good grades. We knew of his devotion to his religion. But there was no inkling of anything more sinister.”

A member of the local Masjid-E-Noor mosque was equally supportive: “I’ve known Sajid since he was a baby. I cannot believe he would be involved in anything illegal. Yes, he attended the mosque regularly and he has led prayers before at Ramadan. But that doesn’t make you a terrorist, does it?” At least six Britons have so far attempted to blow themselves up in suicide operations.They include Asif Hanif and Omar Khan Sharif, who last April took part in an attack on Mike’s Place, a bar in Tel Aviv.

Hanif’s bomb detonated, killing him and three other people. Sharif is believed to have fled after his bomb failed, and was found dead in the sea off Tel Aviv the following month.

All the attacks by British bombers have happened abroad. Some fear it is only a matter of time before the bombers strike in Britain, thanks largely to a change of tactics by Osama Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda organisation.

The relative success of the American government and others in tracking down, arresting, imprisoning or killing members of Al-Qaeda may, ironically, be the main reason why the movement has begun a new kind of warfare against western targets. This is based on the use of home-grown rather than foreign terrorists.

Before the September 11 hijackings, Al-Qaeda’s operations were characterised by multiple simultaneous attacks and the use of foreigners as suicide bombers. At the Khalden training camp in Afghanistan, Islamic militants from around the world were trained to carry out attacks. Fanatically loyal, they went wherever the Al-Qaeda leadership directed them.

“What we learnt was that Al-Qaeda is a top-down structure with command and control very closely controlled,” said Vincent Cannistraro, formerly a terrorism expert with the CIA.

Now that tight organisation has been transformed. In the two years since September 11 the international structure of Al-Qaeda has been heavily damaged. Many of its most important operatives have been arrested or killed; the world total is more than 3,000 in about 100 countries.

Experts doubt whether Bin Laden or his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri — both thought to be hiding along the Afghan-Pakistan border — exercise any day-to-day control over their remaining disciples. It is even questionable whether Al-Qaeda continues to exist as a single, identifiable organisation.

Instead, its methods and techniques are now being treated as blueprints for action by disparate local groups who see themselves as being inspired rather than directed by Bin Laden.

Earlier this year Thabet bin Qais, an Al-Qaeda spokesman, gave a chilling assessment of the new generation of global terrorist. “The Americans only have predictions and old intelligence,” he said. “It will take them a long time to understand the new form of Al-Qaeda.”

That “new form” of organisation sprang from the destruction of its terrorist training bases in Afghanistan. Many of the militants, some with experience of fighting the Americans, scattered back to their homelands. Others returned home after being radicalised in the mosques and madrassas (religious schools) of Pakistan.

Many have taken with them the expertise they were taught in the camps. Their instructions no longer come in the form of direct communications from the depleted and dislocated leadership.

Instead, Bin Laden and Zawahiri have issued a series of tape recordings calling for attacks on vaguely defined targets.

In almost every case the attacks that have been carried out have been the work of nationals of the country in which the operations were mounted. Claims of responsibility, too, are made in the names of unknown, nationally based organisations.

The bombers who hit Riyadh last May, killing 34 people, called themselves al-Muwahiddun (literally Those Who Profess the Oneness of God). The attacks on Casablanca four days later, which killed 33 people, were claimed by Assirat al Moustaquim (the Straight Path).

Bombers who blew up 19 Shell petrol stations in Pakistan at about the same time called themselves the Muslim United Army. The group behind the recent attacks in Istanbul was named as the Great Eastern Islamic Raiders’ Front. All the bombers came from the target countries.

Terrorism experts believe the move to nationally based organisations has direct implications for Britain. In the past, Islamist fanatics regarded Britain as a staging area where finances could be collected and recruits found while they enjoyed temporary shelter from more oppressive regimes abroad. Now Britain — and British interests abroad — are considered a target.

This fear has replaced the complacency in recent months that Britain had successfully contained the threat of terrorism after September 11.

Officials point to two recent developments in Britain that make them fear the worst. The number of warnings from their sources about possible plots has increased substantially.

In addition, several of those warnings are now much more credible.

An increase in “terrorist chatter” and reports from surveillance teams that some suspects were “on the move” led officials at MI5 to assess that the level of threat to Britain had been raised.

The decision was endorsed by the MI5 official who runs the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre (JTAC), a recently formed unit designed to collate and evaluate intelligence on the Islamist threat.

On November 12 the unit dispatched a confidential security service information report (SSIR) to senior Whitehall officials and to all 43 chief constables in England and Wales.

It did not disclose the sources of the new information, but it warned that there was now a “credible threat” of an attack against “UK assets in Britain or abroad”.

One security official said: “The warning noted that Al-Qaeda was now represented in Britain and that it was intent on doing something.”

The existence of a surveillance operation on Badat and fears about a stash of explosives was just one of several factors in the framing of these warnings.

Just one week after the SSIR, Eliza Manningham-Buller, the director-general of MI5, decided that the agency simply did not have enough resources to cope with the existing threat.

“She made her views plain,” said a Cabinet Office insider. “She told David Blunkett (the home secretary) that there was a growing awareness that the problem is significant.” She reinforced her point by circulating a warning to ministers that a big Al-Qaeda operation was in the pipeline.

Two days later terrorists drove truck bombs into the British consulate and the HSBC bank in Istanbul, Turkey. Three Britons, including Roger Short, the consul-general, were among the 32 people who died. As a result, a Cabinet Office security committee is now undertaking a Whitehall-wide review of counter-terrorism spending.

The Home Office, the Foreign Office, the Ministry of Defence, the Department for Transport and other ministries have been asked to submit details of their spending on counterterrorism.

But the aim is not to provide new money for the war on terror. Instead, ministers want to “reprioritise” spending within the existing overall security budget, reducing the cash given to some departments so that MI5 can get more.

Manningham-Buller has also told ministers that the sheer size of the “terrorist pool” — the number of potential suspects — and the fact that most of them are living within the law-abiding community of 1.6m Muslims in Britain, has made her task virtually impossible.

The difficulty for the security services is that many of the terrorists are “sleepers” — young men with no criminal records who are not known to the police. Ministers have been told that some are British citizens living outwardly ordinary lives.

MI5 and Special Branch are thought to be running as many as 10 covert surveillance operations against suspected Islamist terrorists. Insiders say there are at least two cells formed by Al-Qaeda members operating in Britain.

Worryingly, suspects have carried out “dummy runs” against potential targets — thought to be shopping centres or large commercial buildings near the M25 motorway.

One security source said a terrorist suspect had been followed driving a car towards a potential target with a cardboard box — representing a dummy bomb — in the boot.

Security insiders said that last week’s arrest of Badat is just the tip of the iceberg as far as their inquiries into suspected Islamist terrorism in Britain goes.

Blunkett told MPs last Thursday that Badat was suspected of having links to Al-Qaeda. He said that the “life and liberty” of people in this country had been protected by his arrest.

However, his comments were roundly criticised by Matthias Kelly, chairman of the Bar Council. He said it was a matter for the courts to decide if Badat had committed any offence.

Police suspect that at least one Al-Qaeda cell has been formed in the north of England. A second cell is believed to be based in the Midlands with links in Yorkshire.

On Thursday police arrested a 33-year-old man and searched several premises in Birmingham. He was released yesterday, but Badat was still being held for questioning last night and more arrests and raids are expected soon.

Police will be questioning Badat about any links he may have had with the Finsbury Park mosque, north London, and about whether he also attended a mosque in Brixton, south London.

A fellow student there was Richard Reid, who is serving three life sentences in America for trying to blow up a transatlantic jet with explosives hidden in his shoe.

Scotland Yard is also concerned about the possibility of synchronised car bombings on targets in the London area. The precise date for the feared attack is unknown.

Sources close to the investigation fear the idea may be for at least two Al-Qaeda teams to drive cars loaded with explosives into crowded areas such as large shopping centres.

This may involve a suicide attack, but it is thought equally possible that the cars, loaded with time-delay bombs, could be left by the terrorists.

The security services are concerned because Al-Qaeda has a history of using the Christmas period to carry out attacks against western targets.

Badat’s arrest has been greeted with relief rather than triumphalism at Scotland Yard. Senior officers even suggest the arrest is not connected to a more serious attack they fear may be coming.

One source said: “This is not a big triumph. A lot of people here are very, very nervous about this.

“They are watching a number of people, not just one or two. The feeling is that some of them may be planning acts of terrorism.”

November 30, 2003 at 11:02 AM in Current Terrorism | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home