Police swoop on Britain's first 'jihad training camp'

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Anti-terror police raided what is believed to be Britain's first home-grown jihad training camp in the grounds of a former English ballet school.

They rounded up a network of alleged terrorist recruiters after spying on them at the secluded country mansion.

It is understood the group, which included several recent converts to Islam, were being schooled in fundamentalist ideals associated with Al Qaeda.

Last night, 14 men were being questioned, including at least one man described as a 'high-profile fundamentalist Muslim cleric'.

Months of painstaking surveillance by MI5 culminated in police swooping on a group of 12 men as they sat down to a £4.99 'all-you-can-eat' halal buffet in The Bridge To China Town restaurant in Borough, South London, late on Friday night, after they returned from a trip to the Islamic school.

It was followed by a series of raids at addresses across the capital and a massive police and forensic operation targeting the building and grounds of the Islamic school in East Sussex where they had been staying.

Police said the men were arrested under the Terrorism Act 2000 on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism.

Anti-terrorist police established a three-mile exclusion zone around the former Legat ballet academy in Mark Cross, near Crowborough, now occupied by the Jameah Islameah School, amid claims it was being used by Islamic fundamentalists to train teenage Muslim boys.

It is believed the action was sanctioned under tough anti-terrorism legislation banning 'incitement of terrorism'.

Whitehall security sources with first-hand knowledge of the operations said the raids were sparked by detailed intelligence about the activities of a group of 'terrorist recruiters'.

Security officials believe the network was involved in 'recruiting people to the extremist Islamic cause' and putting the raw recruits through 'intensive training and indoctrination'.

One source said: "This network is not thought to be involved in actively plotting terrorism. This was a sophisticated training regime, designed to indoctrinate recruits into the extremist Islamic cause."

MI5 is understood to have spent months building up a detailed intelligence picture of the group and its activities. The covert operation involved specialist watch teams tracking the men's movements, telephone calls, e-mails and internet use.

Central to the investigation was the group's use of the Jameah Islameah School, where MI5 is believed to have planted listening devices and mini-cameras to monitor the group.

It is understood the men were seen engaged in 'outward-bound'-style training and bonding and are also believed to have been practising martial arts. There is understood to have been no evidence of weapons or explosives at the centre.

Locals watching the raid yesterday claimed that there had been growing suspicion about student activities there.

Philip Child, 18, said: "People around here have always been a bit suspicious. They think that there has been something going on at the school because staff and pupils have always been quite secretive."

The school opened in September 2003 and currently has 12 pupils housed in a £3million former convent set in 54 acres of woodland in the village of Mark Cross.

A Government Ofsted inspection last December gave a damning report on the school, claiming that it did not provide a satisfactory education for its pupils. Inspectors found that pupils had no textbooks and that the quality of teaching was poor.

According to its website, the premises encourages Islamic groups to 'appoint a person from your centre who wishes to serve the community and send them to us to be trained'.

The school's prospectus says its aims are to 'provide a high standard of academic and Islamic education' and 'to develop real Islamic moral values'.

But last night it emerged that the charitable trust which set up the school now appears to have nothing to do with its day-to-day operation.

Trustee Muhammed Anas said: "The school was originally set up to educate Muslim children from London. Our main objective was to teach religiousness and piety. Terrorism just does not come into the equation."

Speaking about the school raid, he added: "It's very shocking. I have been away from the school for a long time. My last full understanding was that the place was being rented out to people for conferences or holidays."

He said the school was now run by its principal, Mohammed Bilal Patel. "He was an imam in Balham mosque," he said. "He was a very respected person in the community, somebody you could rely on. He is in no way a fundamentalist."

The Trust bought the school in 1991 for £850,000, with money raised by Muslims across the country.

The arrests follow renewed criticism of the police and security services over their failure to curb the activities of extremist Muslim clerics who continue to praise acts of terrorism against the West.

Among those being monitored is Abu Abdullah, a British-born firebrand who is an associate of jailed hook-handed cleric Abu Hamza, who has been alleged to have links to the Jameah Islameah School.

Last week, Abdullah was quoted praising the July 7 London Tube and bus bombers and defending suicide attacks against Britons.

The operation follows claims that some of the July 7 bombers were involved in jihad training activities within the UK, although there is no link to those arrested.

 

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