In a raid on September 1, British police rounded up fourteen men suspected of being involved in a terrorist training network in Britain . The men purportedly ran training and indoctrination camps across Britain and had been under surveillance for months. Police further claimed that the arrests were made in a “pre-planned, intelligence-led operation.” They are being held under the new, controversial law that bans the glorification of acts of terrorism. Two of them have been charged with receiving training for terrorism (an offense under the new terror act) and two others with “possessing information likely to be useful to a person committing an act of terrorism” (source). Eight of the remaining men are still in custody, and two were released without charge. The disclosure of the investigation once more exposes the growing trend in Europe of homegrown terrorism and youth radicalization.
The Jameah Islameah School
Several addresses were searched in the probe, among them an Islamic school in England where some the radical training of young Muslims might have taken place. Located on 54-acres in East Sussex, the school displays a quiescent panorama where young pupils come to engage in Islamic studies. The school’s web site states that it “provides its students with an opportunity of [sic] lifetime in the form of Islamic teacher training” and that it caters to boys between 11 and 16 (source).
An interesting component of the case is that Abu Hamza al-Masri, the jailed radical cleric who got seven years in prison for instigating Muslims to kill non-Muslims, once visited the school along with his group of followers. One of these followers, Abu Abdullah, is now among those being questioned (source). While police are focusing their efforts on the school, the facility’s Imam Bilal Patel maintained that they have nothing to do with any terrorism-related activity. He added that he became worried when al-Masri and his followers arrived at the school because he disliked his behavior and considered the potential negative image this could portray to the neighbors. So far, there have been no revelations on the school’s role in the terrorist training camp allegations; however, in case such evidence should emerge, it may provide further support for the statistics showing that the targets for radicalization are becoming younger and that it is becoming ever more difficult to make up a uniformed socio-psychological profile to track them.
New Patterns of Networking
Another factor brought to attention is evidence showcasing how militants have gone on ‘bonding trips’ such as adventure training and holidays to form closer relationships. Among the examples of this phenomenon are the reports that two of the perpetrators of the July 7 bombing on the London transportation system went on a team-building rafting vacation in Wales shortly before the attacks.
As more training camps emerge across Britain and Europe, counterterrorism officials will face all the more problems. Training camps can be veiled in private institutions, homes, and rural lands where few people visit, so they become very tricky to detect. One video of such a training site was filmed in Sweden last summer and was released on a well known Jihadist web site. Terrorists claiming to belong to the Iraqi insurgent group Ansar al-Sunnah test an anti-personnel IED (Terror Web Watch). The film was allegedly shot in the southern parts of the country where large tracts of uninhabited lands and forests make it technically possible for militants to cover up such a camp.
Whereas before, it was common knowledge that young aspirants generally went on radicalization trips to the Middle East, Southeast Asia, or North Africa, a new development of home-grown camps being built on plain Western European soil is emerging. The trial of the individuals raided this month will likely disclose further patterns and mechanisms of this kind of skilled network. It is important to scrutinize the construction and make-up of these groups in order to tackle the emergence of training and indoctrination camps in Europe.
