Guardian : British defendant in terror plot trial tells of gradual conversion to militant jihadist

British defendant in terror plot trial tells of gradual conversion to militant jihadist

· Attitude hardened after visit to training camp
· 'Soft, kind and humble' Taliban impressed him

by David Pallister | September 15, 2006

A 24-year-old British Muslim told the Old Bailey yesterday about his ideological journey from schoolboy to militant jihadist. Omar Khyam, a defendant in the fertiliser bomb terror trial, described how he became radicalised after a visit to a Pakistani training camp for militants fighting in Kashmir and a trip to Afghanistan to meet the Taliban.

At the time no one around him talked of attacks in Britain, he said. "I was born here and felt allegiance," he said. He supported England at football. But after the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and of Iraq in 2003, he said that attitudes among some of his friends hardened: "For the first time I began hearing that Britain should be attacked."

Mr Khyam was arrested in 2004 after fertiliser explosive was found in a storage depot in west London. The prosecution allege he was a member of a British terror cell linked to al-Qaida, which discussed bombing nightclubs and other targets in the UK.

Mr Khyam, his brother Shujah Mahmood, 19, Waheed Mahmood, 34, and Jawad Akbar, 23, all from Crawley, West Sussex, Salahuddin Amin, 31, from Luton, Anthony Garcia, 24, of Ilford, east London, and Nabeel Hussain, 21, of Horley, Surrey, deny conspiring to cause explosions likely to endanger life between January 1, 2003 and March 31, 2004.

Mr Khyam, Mr Garcia and Mr Hussain also deny a charge under the Terrorism Act of possessing 600kg (1,300lb) of ammonium nitrate fertiliser for terrorism.

As the defence case began, Mr Khyam told the jury that his grandfather had served in the British army and came to the UK in the 1970s. Many of his family were in the Pakistani military or ISI, the intelligence service. He said he went to a predominantly white school, was captain of the cricket team and did well in his GCSEs.

He became more interested in religion as a teenager at college in Surrey, attending meetings of the radical group al- Muhajiroun, where violent videos of the wars in Chechnya and Bosnia were shown. He also started to learn about fighting in Kashmir between India and Pakistan with the ISI recruiting and training irregular mujahideen.

On a family visit to Pakistan in 1999 he sought out and talked to groups active in Kashmir, he said. Back in Britain, he wanted to dedicate himself "to helping Kashmiri Muslims, and go to Pakistan for military training".

In January 2000, aged 18 and studying for his A-levels, he ran away to Pakistan and joined an ISI-run training camp for militants in the mountains above Rawalpindi. He had told his mother he was going to France to study but arranged for a letter explaining his real movements to be sent home.

"They told me everything I needed to know for fighting guerrilla warfare in Kashmir," he said. This included training with AK47 rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns as well as reconnaisance and sniper techniques. He left only after his family used their contacts in the ISI to find him and he was summoned from the mountains for an emotional reunion with his grandfather.

Although concerned for his safety, most of his family, except his mother, were happy with his actions.

In June 2001, having enrolled at the Metropolitan University in north London for a computer course, he returned to Pakistan for a friend's wedding. In one of the militant group's offices he saw bags of fertiliser which he took to be part of their "arsenal". He then visited Kabul and was impressed by the Taliban. "They were soft, kind and humble, but harsh with their enemies."

The attacks on the US on September 11 2001 triggered intense discussions among British Muslims. Mr Khyam's reaction was: "I was happy. America was, and still is, the greatest enemy of Islam. They put up puppet regimes in Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt ... but obviously 3,000 people died so there were mixed feelings."

The Qur'an forbids the killing of women and children but some eminent Muslim scholars decreed that the attacks were permissible, he said.

After a few months of debate, and seeing the defeat of the Taliban, he said he had come to the conclusion that it had been tactically unwise. "I think we would be working better in our own [Muslim] countries, trying to establish an Islamic state," he said.

Asked about Osama bin Laden, he said. "In Afghanistan he won people's hearts and minds. People love him all over the region. There are pictures of him all over the place in Pakistan."

During 2002 and 2003, Mr Khyam became actively engaged in collecting "money and equipment" in the UK to be sent to Pakistan for the mujahideen. He also made further trips to the country. "I wanted to help out in the cause," he said.

Mr Khyam said he did not think that two men he dealt with in Pakistan were members of al-Qaida, as alleged by the American supergrass Mohammed Junaid Babar. Asked by his counsel, Joel Bennathan, whether one of the men had ever advised him, or told him, to carry out an attack on the UK, Mr Khyam replied: "No".

The hearing continues.