MP Michael Meacher Says British Recruited Terrorists

[Guest guest]

"...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.

 

The Guardian - UK10-2-5

 

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