Daily Telegraph: Al-Qaeda Training British, European Extremists in Syria to Set up Terror Cells at Home
Local Editor
The Daily telegraph reported Monday that al-Qaeda is training hundreds of British people fighting in Syria to become extremists and urging them to carry out attacks when they return home.
According to an interview with a defector, known as Murad, from the so-called "Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant" [ISIL], other recruits from Europe and the US were also being trained to make car bombs before being sent home to form terror cells.
"They talked often about terrorist attacks," he said of his former ISIL instructors.
He further stated: "The foreigners were proud of 9/11 and the London bombings. The British, French and American "mujahideen" in the room started talking about places that they wanted to bomb or explode themselves in Europe and the United States."
"The American said he dreamed of blowing up the White House," he told the newspaper.
He called the teachings of ISIL, which grew out of al-Qaeda's affiliate organization in Iraq, "very hardline".
Britain's intelligence services estimate that around 500 British fighters are currently in Syria, and fear they will return radicalized.
Police on Friday charged two 21-year-old men from Birmingham, central England, with travelling to Syria to carry out acts of terrorism.
Britain's security and intelligence agencies believe the threat of would-be terrorists being directed back to the UK by al-Qaeda organizers in Syria is growing.
According to the daily, "It is feared extremist and terror groups such as ISIL will have an increasing influence allowing them to target more foreign recruits for their cause. The threat from Syria is dominating the work of MI5 and the spy agency has had to allocate more and more resources to tackling the danger in the past six months."
"Some have gone to the country with genuine intentions to fight the regime but are then brainwashed by al-Qaeda and encouraged to return home and launch attacks there instead," it clarified.
"This is a threat that is not going away and is likely to increase," one senior Whitehall source said.
Two 15-year-old boys from France were reported last week to have left Toulouse to join the fighting in Syria. The possibility of French citizens returning from Syria as hardened extremists was the "biggest threat that the country faces in the coming years," Manuel Valls, the interior minister, said on Sunday.
France and Europe risk being "overwhelmed" by the phenomenon, he added. Valls estimated that 700 French nationals have either travelled to Syria or returned to France - or are currently en route. Some 21 have been killed.
Shiraz Maher, a senior research fellow at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalization at King's College London, estimated last week that up to 50 British fighters have already returned home.
Last month, Richard Walton, the head of Scotland Yard's counter - terrorism command, said there were already indications that Britons were returning from Syria with orders to carry out attacks, with the Metropolitan Police carrying out a "huge number of operations" to protect the public.
He said: "I don't think the public realizes the seriousness of the problem. The penny hasn't dropped. But Syria is a game - changer. We are seeing it every day. You have hundreds of people going to Syria, and if they don't get killed they get radicalized."
In his first public speech in October, Andrew Parker, the Director General of MI5, said: "For the future, there is good reason to be concerned about Syria. A growing proportion of our casework now has some link to Syria, mostly concerning individuals from the UK who have travelled to fight there or who aspire to do so."
Murad said that anti-Western sentiment was virulent and ISIL leaders had discussed attacking Western targets. "The meetings happened in secret," he said. "But some of my European colleagues in ISIL told me that our emir was sending them to Europe to teach people "jihad"."
Murad, a Syrian, did not give his age but appeared to be in his early twenties. Until two years ago, he had been at Aleppo University studying law, a subject that al-Qaeda abhors because it involves understanding secular law, not Sharia.
"The teachings by the older "jihadists" were very hard-line," he said. "I had to edit what I believed about Islam to accept them."
Murad decided to join ISIL in Aleppo in August last year because he heard that the group was "serving Islam and protecting Muslims". He spent time with ISIL units in their eastern stronghold of Raqqa, and in Jabal al-Akrad, an extremist group near the Mediterranean coast.
"Every morning his group would wake at 5am to pray. After that they would study the Koran and then do two or three hours of military training. This included how to make and detonate car bombs and suicide vests."
"We all know how to do this now," he said. "It is one of the first things they teach us, the simple training. There are different kinds of vests - one where the detonator is attached to a cord and is held the hand, and another that has five detonators on it. We had to wear them to battles. The principal purpose for this is not to let ourselves be kidnapped or arrested. It is very easy. I even taught my two brothers how to make a vest."
But Murad disagreed with some of the "emir's" orders that they should fight fellow Syrian armed groups and treat them as "kafrs" or "unbelievers".
Late one night, he escaped across the border to Turkey. "What is happening in Syria is not "jihad". ISIL is not protecting Muslims it is killing them," he said. "I want to tell all the "mujahideen" not come to Syria. This is not jihad; you will find yourself killing other Muslims."
Murad did not reveal details of how foreign fighters were travelling between Europe and Syria.
As The Telegraph has previously revealed, al-Qaeda has a network of safe houses which operates in Turkey, through which foreign fighters wanting to go to Syria - or back home - are funneled.
Source: Daily Telegraph, Edited by website team
