Author: Jason Burke, chief reporter
Publication: The Observer,UK
Date: May 25, 2003
URL: http://www.observer.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,963314,00.html
Chilling details about the existence
of a group of extremist Islamic militants, set on executing attacks on
civilians in Britain, are revealed in intelligence documents obtained by
The Observer.
The cell, comprising at least six
individuals and based in London and Luton, is part of the 'al-Tauhid group'.
The group is independent of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda organisation, but
follow a similar hardline agenda and has been blamed for a series of attacks
and plots over the last three years.
According to German intelligence
documents, it is believed that members of the group, comprised predominantly
of Jordanian and Palestinian Islamic militants, have plotted to use poison
in the UK and elsewhere.
Following a spate of strikes by
Islamic militants in the Middle East, British police and security officials
are concerned about a possible suicide attack in the UK. Last week a message
apparently from Ayman al-Zawahiri, the deputy leader of al- Qaeda, named
the UK as a country where militants should 'make the ground burn'.
British security officials are on
the highest alert possible before ordering a full mobilisation to counter
a specific attack if they receive details of the time and target of any
strike.
Overt actions, such as the placing
of concrete bollards outside the Houses of Parliament, roadblocks in the
centre of London and increased armed patrols at high-profile sites, airports
and ports over the bank holiday weekend, have been accompanied by increased
intelligence operations such as surveillance of known militant sympathisers.
'We are very busy,' said a police source last week.
Al-Tauhid's presence in the UK is
known to security authorities and members of the group have already been
arrested. The Palestinian-Jordanian cleric, Abu Qutada, who is being held
in Belmarsh prison under new anti-terrorist legislation, acted as its spiritual
leader, issuing religious opinions on the legality of planned operations.
Most of the details in the German
dossier, which has been compiled in the past three months, have come from
the interrogation of key al-Tauhid members arrested in Germany in April
2002 and February this year. Several of those arrested have been linked
by German investigators to the 'Hamburg cell' of 11 September hijackers.
Shadi Abdalla, a senior al-Tauhid
militant, who claimed to have been close to bin Laden at one time, told
questioners that the main European base of the group is in Luton. Abdalla
listed five individuals active in the UK and one, known as 'Abdelhakim'
or 'Adda', who was 'operative' in Ireland. The German investigators believe
that there are other activists who are yet to be identified.
Those named as al-Tauhid activists
in the UK include 'Abu Rasmi' who ran a series of businesses in Iran and
Pakistan and specialised in false travel documents. He was assisted by
a Jordanian known as 'Abu Jabal'. In 2001, the dossier says, the two men
were told by their leader to obtain dozens of false passports to allow
al-Tauhid militants to escape from their base near Herat in western Afghanistan.
Another Palestinian- Jordanian militant, named as 'Abu Abed' in the dossier,
is said to have lived in the UK as an asylum-seeker before travelling to
Afghanistan on a false British passport.
The German dossier claims that he
was identified by a Jordanian spy in the al-Tauhid camp Afghanistan. He
fled the country but was arrested by Pakistani authorities and deported,
via the United Arab Emirates, to Jordan where he was persuaded to work
for the authorities there. He was sent back to Britain to penetrate the
al-Tauhid network here but confessed to Qutada that he was a spy. He is,
the dossier says, imprisoned in the UK.
The leader of the al-Tauhid group
is named as Abu Musab al- Zarqawi, the veteran Jordanian activist identified
by Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, as a link between al-Qaeda
and Saddam Hussein's regime in Baghdad. However the German dossier explicitly
says that captured al-Tauhid militants maintain al-Zarqawi 'was in opposition
to bin Laden' and that the group 'was especially for Jordanians who did
not want to join al- Qaeda'. This, the report says, 'conflicts with ...
information' from America.
German police say they intercepted
conversations in code between al-Tauhid members referring to the use of
'fruit juice', which the interrogated militants said was poison.
Al-Tauhid has been linked to the
killing of US diplomat, Laurence Foley in Amman in October 2002. Funding
for a plot to blow up tourist sites in Jordan on Millennium Eve was also
handled by individuals linked to al-Tauhid in Britain.
