Articles

Where did the London Bombers come from?

Originally published The Sunday Times (About Jenvey's work)

Hamza is said to have been so convinced by a British undercover investigator posing as an extremist website operator that he allegedly sent him several secret propaganda films designed to attract new recruits. The videos were used, say investigators, to convince British Muslims to undergo jihad training at camps in Afghanistan and Bosnia.

The tapes and e-mails were obtained by Glen Jenvey, a 38-year-old freelance counterintelligence investigator from Wiltshire, over a period of more than a year. As the evidence flowed in, Jenvey forwarded it to the FBI, which is now building a case to extradite Hamza to America.

Last week Scotland Yard confirmed that anti-terrorist branch officers had taken a statement from Jenvey and sent a copy to the FBI.

The evidence is being marshalled by US government prosecutors in New York, where Hamza is part of a grand jury investigation into a plot to provide weapons training to American mujaheddin on a cattle ranch in Bly, Oregon.

If the grand jury charges Hamza with conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists, which carries a 25-year jail sentence, sources close to the case say they will press for his extradition to America.

According to statements given to the anti-terrorist branch in March, Jenvey set up an internet site called islamic-news.co.uk in 2002 using the fictitious name Pervez Khan. He published news items on the site from Kashmiri extremist groups and other hardline Islamic propaganda.

Once established, he sent the material to Hamza’s website — supportersofshariah.org, which is now shut down. “He was so pleased with this he decided to put a link to my site from his site. That was his first big mistake,” said Jenvey last week.

As a consequence, Jenvey was able to monitor everyone who logged on to Hamza’s website, a facility he passed on to the FBI so that it could also monitor Hamza’s activities.

He then decided to take the operation a step further. “By now I was getting close to Hamza. He trusted me,” said Jenvey. “We had been e-mailing each other a lot and I had been passing the e-mails to the FBI. We also started to speak on the phone.

“I started to suggest I could help him recruit people for his jihad. He became very excited by this. He would burble prayers down the phone in an almost demented fashion. I thought he must be a bit mad.

“He said he would send me some material to help me win supporters and prepare them for jihad. He said he had some special tapes but that they were somewhere secret and he did not keep them in the mosque. He said they would be sent to me.”

Less than a month later a package arrived at Jenvey’s home. Inside were 20 audio tapes. A second package arrived a week later with six two-hour video tapes. Jenvey was shocked by what he saw. One tape starts by showing a training camp in Bosnia and scenes of urban combat training. Jihad anthems play in the background and a voice in English says: “Make ready to continue to terrorise the enemy of Allah.”

The tape later cuts to Hamza speaking to a private audience in London about “so-called” suicide bombers. He appears to use the Koran to justify the tactic. “It is to inflict suffering, it is in the time, in the methodology of suicide, it is there and at its peak,” says Hamza.

In another tape, three British volunteers are interviewed in Bosnia about their experiences. All three urge Muslims at home to undergo jihad training and criticise those who are content to merely donate money or lend moral support.

The first volunteer identifies himself as being from north London. He says he is a third-year medical student at Birmingham University. Hiding his face behind a black scarf, he holds an assault rifle aloft as he speaks to the camera and talks about the satisfaction of seeing “hundreds of dead bodies” in Bosnia.

Another tape opens with scenes of what appears to be a massacre of Serbian civilians in a village in Bosnia. The camera roves around the scene, focusing on corpses that litter the ground. Some of the bodies are being taken away on stretchers by distraught relatives. A jihad anthem plays in the background.

Another tape, allegedly provided by Hamza, is a documentary in Arabic about the building of the World Trade Center in New York and the Petronas Towers in Malaysia. It was made prior to September 11.

Jenvey continued to monitor Hamza’s website. In April this year he noticed a film showing Russian soldiers being blown up by Chechnyan terrorists.

The rest off the film was available through a link from Hamza’s website. It showed training with live ammunition at a camp in Afghanistan and appears to be an exercise for would-be assassins. Some of the target images projected on to a screen are of western politicians. Many of the faces are obscured, but Bill Clinton, the former US president, is clearly recognisable.

Shortly after Jenvey reported this Hamza’s website was shut down by the internet service provider.

One tape given to Jenvey has already made an impact. It shows Hamza at a meeting sharing a platform with the US terrorist suspect James Ujaama.

Ujaama designed Hamza’s internet site under the name Abu Samaya, but denied knowing Hamza when first arrested by the FBI. However, his defence crumbled when the tape was produced. He is now the key witness against Hamza in the grand jury investigation.

According to court papers, Hamza provided letters of “introduction or sponsorship” for people to enter Al-Qaeda camps. The documents say he sent two “emissaries” to help Ujaama set up the Bly training camp.

Despite his activities, Hamza is still at liberty in Britain, although his assets have been frozen and his disability benefits stopped. The Home Office is trying to strip him of his British citizenship in order to deport him. The cleric preached at the North London mosque in Finsbury Park before it was closed down following a police raid in January.

A senior legal source involved in Hamza’s case said: “Either they will strip him of his citizenship and then detain him under new immigration laws so he rots in prison or they will extradite him to America.”

A spokesman for Hamza denied he played any role in terror. “Supportersofshariah.org had many affiliate websites to whom we would send videos,” he said. “Abu Hamza’s tapes were on sale openly at Finsbury Park mosque. The grand jury investigation in America is a joke and a kangaroo court. They have put pressure on Ujaama to say these things.”