THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: When Finsbury Park mosque opened nearly 20 years ago it was intended to be a centre for peaceful worship, feted by the Prince of Wales and seen as an emblem of multi-cultural Britain.But the Guantánamo files disclose that by the late 1990s the mosque in north London had become a “haven” for extremism where disaffected young men from around the world were radicalised before being sent to al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan.
At least 35 Guantánamo detainees passed through Finsbury Park and a network of other centres used by extremists in Britain, including Regent’s Park mosque, East London mosque and a rented room above the Four Feathers Youth Club near Baker Street.
The mosques became recruitment centres for an al-Qaeda cell led by Abu Hamza, the radical imam formerly based in Finsbury Park, who is serving a seven-year sentence at Belmarsh high security prison, and Abu Qatada, a fanatical Muslim cleric described by British intelligence as “Osama bin Laden’s ambassador to Europe”.
Together, they turned London into a hub of global terrorism, taking in impressionable immigrants by the dozen and churning them out as killers-in-waiting.
As well as the men who passed through mosques in London, another 10 were radicalised outside the capital, mainly in Birmingham. For many of the Guantánamo detainees who passed through London, their journey to extremism began with hopes of a better life. » | Steven Swinford | Monday, April 25, 2011
