Author: Amit Roy
Publication: The Telegraph
Date: September 3, 2006
URL: http://www.telegraphindia.com/1060903/asp/foreign/story_6693163.asp
Only weeks after Nobel Prize winner Amartya
Sen expressed disapproval of Muslim and other faith schools in Britain, police
have swooped on the Jameah Islamiyah Secondary School in Mark Cross, near
Crowborough, East Sussex, an institution with only a handful of pupils but
a 100-room building and set in 54 acres of grounds.
The school, which was condemned by government
inspectors for its poor academic work, was being searched by police today
but so far no arrests have been made.
In anti-terrorist raids overnight and early
today, 14 Muslims, thought to be mainly British Pakistanis, have been arrested
in London, several of them at a Chinese restaurant. Armed police swarmed into
The Bridge to China Town in Borough, south London, ordered diners to stop
eating, closed the kitchens and took several people away.
Another two have been arrested in Manchester
by 50 policemen. These are tough times for young British Pakistanis who feel
they are increasingly being demonised as the "enemy within".
Since the unravelling of the alleged plot
to blow up trans-Atlantic aircraft, police activity has intensified with British
Pakistanis coming in for closer scrutiny.
And today, a senior Scotland Yard officer
claimed that "thousands" may be directly or indirectly involved
in terrorism.
Peter Clarke, head of Scotland Yard's Anti-Terrorist
Branch, who often appears on television during times of great crisis, said:
"What we've learnt since 9/11 is that the threat is not something that's
simply coming from overseas into the UK. What we've learned, and what we've
seen all too graphically and all too murderously is that we have a threat
which is being generated here within the UK."
Interviewed for a BBC TV programme called
Al Qaida - Time to Talk?, he said: "All I can say is that our knowledge
is increasing and certainly in terms of broad description, the numbers of
people who we have to be interested in are into the thousands.
"That includes a whole range of people,
not just terrorists, not just attackers, but the people who might be tempted
to support or encourage or to assist."
Those arrested today were picked up under
the Terrorism Act 2000.
It is being suggested that most are not directly
involved in terrorist activities but are suspected of "instigating"
terrorism - a concept that some lawyers say will be hard to define.
For example, could voicing opposition to the
Iraq war constitute "instigation" if it encourages young Muslims
to take up terrorism?
A Scotland Yard spokesman said: "Officers
from the Metropolitan Police's Anti-Terrorist Branch have arrested 14 men
under the Terrorism Act 2000 in a pre-planned, intelligence-led operation.
"The arrests in south and east London
follow many months of surveillance and investigation in a joint operation
involving the Anti-Terrorist Branch, Special Branch and the Security Service."
