The 9/11 Wars (113 page)

  
36
.
The violence spilled over on to the streets of Paris, with bombs going off in Metro stations in 1995 and a French airliner hijacked at Algiers in 1994.

  
37
.
Malik,
From Fatwa to Jihad
, pp. 123–5.

  
38
.
See Martin Bright,
When Progressives Treat with Reactionaries
, Policy Exchange, 2006.

  
39
.
In the UK mosques went from 51 in 1979 to 329 six years later. In France in the same period, the rise was fivefold, from 136 to 766. Pargeter,
The New Frontiers of Jihad
, p. 19.

  
40
.
Laurence and Vaisse,
Intégrer l’Islam
, p. 281. The responsibility for 90 per cent of anti-Semitic attacks in the 1990s lay with the extreme right; that for 80 per cent of such attacks from 2000 onwards lay with ‘Arabo-Muslim’ aggressors.

  
41
.
‘I was of a generation that did not think of itself as Muslim or Hindi or Sikh or even as Asian but as black,’ remembered the British academic and journalist Kenan Malik, explaining that one reason for a growing disaffection with left-wing groups was their focus on the class struggle rather than discrimination. Malik,
From Fatwa to Jihad
, pp. xi, 21.

  
42
.
Paul Harris, Martin Bright and Burhan Wazir, ‘Five Britons killed in “jihad brigade” ’,
Observer
, October 28, 2001.

  
43
.
Details of April 30, 2003 Tel Aviv suicide bombing, Israeli Ministry of Foreign affairs, press release, June 3, 2003.

  
44
.
Shiv Malik, ‘Omar Khan Sharif: profile’,
New Statesman
, April 24, 2006. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack.

  
45
.
Author interview, Amsterdam, November 2004.

  
46
.
Eliza Manningham-Butler, director general of the Security Service, ‘Global Terrorism: Are We Meeting the Challenge?’, James Smart lecture, City of London Police Headquarters, October 16, 2003.

  
47
.
Dominic Casciani, ‘MI5 “too stretched ” before 7 July’, BBC, May 19, 2009. UK Parliament and Intelligence and Security Committee,
Report into the London Terrorist Attacks on
7
July 2005
, HMSO, 2006, p. 33.

  
48
.
John Stevens,
News of the World
, March 6, 2005.

  
49
.
‘Geheimdienste warnen vor Islamisten-Terror in Deutschland’,
Der Spiegel
, November 13, 2004.

  
50
.
Beatrice de Graff, ‘The Nexus between Salafism and Jihadism in the Netherlands’,
CTC Sentinel
, vol. 3, no. 3, March 2010, pp. 17–22.

  
51
.
Author interviews with senior Dutch security officials, London, July 2008. See
Paths to Global Jihad: Radicalization and Recruitment. Proceedings from FFI Seminar
, Oslo, March 15, 2006, p. 18.

  
52
.
Interestingly, many of Hezb-ut-Tahrir’s early members in the UK were former members of extreme left-wing groups such as the Socialist Workers’ Party.

  
53
.
Author interview with Ed Husain, London, July 2007. See also Ed Husain,
The Islamist: Why I Joined Radical Islam in Britain, What I Saw Inside and Why I Left
, Penguin, 2007.

  
54
.
See the useful discussion in Malik,
From Fatwa to Jihad
, p. 45.

  
55
.
Anshuman Mondal, ‘British Islam after Rushdie’,
Prospect
, April 26, 2009.

  
56
.
Author interview with Shiraz Maher, London, July 2007.

  
57
.
Ibid.

  
58
.
Author interview, MI5, London, July 2007.

  
59
.
Unedited records of court reporting and transcript of trial at Old Bailey, London. Prosecution statement, April 24, 2007. Convictions in the case were quashed on appeal in 2008.

  
60
.
Of the twenty-six Islamic seminaries in Britain in 2006, seventeen are Deobandi.

  
61
.
Qadir continued fundraising through 2003 but eventually turned his energy to running a youth club aimed at combating gang violence among British Pakistani teenagers. Author interview with Hanif Qadir, Walthamstow, July 2007.

  
62
.
Another example from this period would be Dhiren Barot, a British convert to Islam jailed in 2006 for planning a range of mass-casualty attacks in the UK. Barot fought in Kashmir with Pakistani-based militants at the end of the 1990s before going on to pursue an almost decade-long career in Islamic terrorism.

  
63
.
Transcript, complete reporting records, Operation Crevice trial, London, March 2006 to April 2007. Author collection.

  
64
.
The ingredient was ammonium nitrate.

  
65
.
In 2007 the author compiled a survey of key personal data on over eighty British militants detained between 2001 and 2006. Their average age was twenty-nine when they were arrested. See Jason Burke, ‘Omar was a normal British teenager who loved his little brother and Man Utd. So why at 24 did he plan to blow up a nightclub in central London?’,
Observer
, January 20, 2008. A later study published in 2010 arrived at a median age of 27.6. Institute for Strategic Dialogue and Jytte Klausen,
Al Qaeda-Affiliated and ‘Homegrown’ Jihadism in the UK: 1999–2010
, 2010, p. 10. Many studies have been done showing that psychological problems among militant activists, Islamic or otherwise, are no more prevalent than in the general population.

  
66
.
Scott Atran, ‘Who Becomes a Terrorist Today?’,
Perspectives on Terrorism
, vol. 2, no. 5, May 2008.

  
67
.
Author interview, Scotland Yard, London, April 2005.

  
68
.
‘What was the 9/11 Hamburg cell if not a gang,’ said one. Author interview, Walthamstow, August 2006.

  
69
.
Ed Husain,
The Islamist
, pp. 32–33.

  
70
.
Some accounts, such as that of the excellent Ian Buruma in the
New Yorker
edition of January 3, 2005, entitled ‘Final cut’, describe Bouyeri, van Gogh’s killer, wearing ‘a long Middle Eastern-style shirt’. Others, such as an eyewitness quoted in
De Telegraaf
the day after van Gogh’s murder, refer to a hooded sweater. These are not are mutually exclusive. He was variously described by witnesses as wearing a hooded sweater, jeans and a long Maghreb-style traditional shirt. In fact, he appears to have been wearing all three.

  
71
.
Author interview, Walthamstow, London, July 2007.

  
72
.
This account is based on transcripts of the trial of the Crevice conspirators.

  
73
.
Junaid Babar testimony, author collection.

  
74
.
Author interviews, Thames House, London, July 2007.

  
75
.
Crevice transcripts.

  
76
.
Al-Iraqi had been a major in the Iraqi army in the 1980s but a member of al-Qaeda ‘since the late 1990s’, eventually rising to a position on the Shura or council which acted as an advisory body to bin Laden and al-Zawahiri – before the 9/11 attacks. His real name was Nashwan Abdulrazaq Abdulbaqi.

  
77
.
Crevice transcripts.

  
78
.
Crevice transcripts.

  
79
.
Crevice transcripts.

  
80
.
Author interview, Suleimaniyah, Iraq, August, 2002

  
81
.
Author interviews, Kabul, August 2008, March 2009; Rawalpindi, 2008; Jammu, India, 2003.

CHAPTER 9: BOMBS, RIOTS AND CARTOONS

    
1
.
Karen McVeigh and Alexandra Topping, ‘7/7 inquest witness saw bombers “celebrate like sports team” before attack’,
Guardian
, October 13, 2010.

    
2
.
Andrew Malone, ‘Tavistock Square: “I watched as the anxious man on the bus kept going into his bag” ’,
Independent
, July 8, 2005.

    
3
.
Author interviews with Scotland Yard senior officers, London, January 2006.

    
4
.
Khan was born in Leeds, grew up in Beeston and moved to Dewsbury a few months before the July bombings. Tanweer was born in Bradford but grew up in Beeston. Lindsay took the name Abdullah Shaheed Jamal following his conversion to Islam. He later moved to Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire.

    
5
.
Shiv Malik, ‘My Brother the bomber’,
Prospect
, 135, June 2007.; Sandra Laville and Dipazier Aslam, ‘Mentor to the young and vulnerable’,
Guardian
, July 14, 2005. UK Parliament and Intelligence Security Committee,
Report into the London Terrorist Attacks July
7 2005. Melanie Newman, ‘Greenwich and Leeds Met given “limited confidence” ratings by QAA’,
Times Higher Education Supplement
, October 15, 2009. Khan’s wife’s family were Deobandi. His own were broadly Barelvi.

    
6
.
Leeds Metropolitan University was ranked 85 out of 115 in the 2011 universities league table.

    
7
.
Khan had an eight-month-old daughter. His wife was expecting a second. Jonathan Brown, ‘Mohammed Sadique Khan: expectant father whose chosen path meant he would never see his baby’,
Independent
, July 15, 2007.

    
8
.
Jason Burke, ‘Secrets of bomber’s death tape’,
Observer
, September 4, 2005. London bomber: text in full, BBC, September 1, 2005. In fact, the latter has sections missing. Al-Jazeera broadcast the whole version. Text in author collection.