Telegraph | News | Alert over Islamic terrorists who tried to kill bin Laden

Telegraph | News | Alert over Islamic terrorists who tried to kill bin Laden
Alert over Islamic terrorists who tried to kill bin Laden
By Philip Johnston, Home Affairs Editor
(Filed: 01/02/2005)

An Islamic terrorist organisation considered more extreme than Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda has taken root in Britain because of lax asylum procedures, security experts claim today.

The movement, Al-Takfir wa al-Hijra (excommunication and exile), has gradually built its presence in Europe in recent years through loose networks of imams and supporters, according to Jane’s Intelligence Review.

It is so extreme that it once tried to assassinate bin Laden and its members are thought to have aided last year’s Madrid train atrocity.

According to Jane’s, western security agencies now respond more actively to the threat posed by Takfiri adherents, fearing that what has long been a support base for activities in other parts of the world may become an active terror group in Europe itself.

Al-Takfir originated as a peaceful Islamic movement in Egypt in the early 1970s but turned to violence and was implicated in killing two government ministers. It operates as a largely unstructured entity with only loose links to al-Qaeda and with no identifiable leadership structure. The report says it “exists as a web incorporating scattered groups of militants, separated by geography, connected only by radical ideology”.

After a crackdown by the authorities, many Takfiri militants left Egypt to fight Soviet forces in Afghanistan during the 1980s.

Takfiri mujahideen also settled in Europe “where they have been able to propagate their radical form of militant Islam to new generations of followers with little impediment”, the report claims.

Jane’s says the movement has a known presence in France – where 16 mosques have been linked to the Takfiri network – Germany, Italy and Britain.

It adds: “The UK is believed to be a major transit point for Takfiri recruits because it has been regarded as a relatively open distribution point for the `revolutionary message of jihad’.”

Takfiri reject secular power in Muslim countries and call for the restoration of the Islamic “Caliphate” as the only legitimate leadership in Arab and Islamic countries.